What Did You Do When You Were 21?
Kobina Wright
July 02, 2008
If you´ve seen the movie, you´ll know the movie is about a young MIT genius who just turns 21 and is aspiring to go to Harvard Medical School (which he can´t afford) as he is introduced by one of his professors to the dark and lucrative world of counting cards at Black Jack tables in Las Vegas on weekends. Not only does he have to navigate through the jealousy of the new hustle group he´s now apart of, but he catches the attention of casino security – because they don´t take kindly to beating the House all of the time. He´s good. He´s real good… until one bad night when he loses because of his own carelessness. He is lambasted by his professor and catches a beat down by casino card-counting-catching security personnel, played by Lawrence Fishburne. When he flies back home, he receives a notice informing him that he won´t graduate, and his dorm room is ransacked, and all of his Vegas earnings (the ones that were going to help pay for Med School) were taken…I should stop here, because if I tell you his plan to get everything back, I´ll totally ruin it for you.
Anyway, it was a lot to experience at the age of 21. When I was 21, I was a single mother still in college trying to make ends meet and make sense of the chaos all around me. If it weren´t for such chaos that followed me for many years, I wouldn´t have been able to write Raise the Red Teddy: A Single Mother´s Guide to Dating. I wouldn´t have the life experience that led me to the path I´m on now. Oh sure I´d have a different path, but what watching 21 reminded me of, is that our own stories can be very juicy, and it´ those dark and painful moments that allows you to be the hero or heroine that jumps off the page of your own story and inspire the reader (or watcher) of your story to live out their own exciting destiny.
The Wrighter - http://kobina.blogspot.com