Word: youngsters
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Crime and drugs are everywhere in America's inner cities. For Antwan, they were only a few yards away as the youngster floated high above his steamy ghetto playground on a turquoise-and-orange swing set. At the playground's edge two teenagers were selling vials of cocaine from a curbside stash. One dealer cut a score with a passing woman; looking over at Antwan, his partner spotted an opportunity...
Sauntering up to the youngster, the pusher demanded that Antwan serve as a hiding place for the stash or else face a beating. At first the child refused, then gave in. Business continued -- until the "Zone Rangers," an undercover Baltimore vice-and-narcotics squad that had the dealers under surveillance, suddenly sprinted into action. One team of Rangers nabbed the dealers; another pulled Antwan off the swing and confiscated the vials. By the time they reached the station house, the little boy had dissolved in tears...
...wanted the brothers kept together. Instead the boys were placed in separate foster homes. Tommy, the younger, slept on a urine-stained mattress without a sheet. "He cried pitifully," Sweeney recalls. "He wouldn't eat or play. He sat with a shopping bag under his arm." The youngster was returned to his grandmother's house, but soon his mother, who temporarily cleaned herself up with the help of a detox program, regained custody of the boys...
...highly improbable protagonist's role -- Peter Pan grown up? Peter Pan, a Type A investment banker? -- it is hard to imagine anyone other than Robin Williams. After all, the arc of Hook's Peter Pan -- an impish, Dionysian youngster, after a painful struggle with worldly temptation, finds his family to be the source of true happiness -- is a pretty fair summary of Robin Williams' life...
...fears may not be unfounded. Two Little Axe, Okla., families that brought suit against morning prayers in school in 1981 became targets of relentless harassment. The children were repeatedly asked by teachers why they didn't believe in God, and one youngster found an upside-down cross hung on his locker. One evening while members of one of the families were at a football game, their house was fire bombed and burned down...