Timmy's Dead End Street

Richard Messina

Hartford Courant

Timmy Smith, 11, lives on a dead end street in Rockville,CT. Like that road, Timmy's perspective of life is narrow, shaped only by the small, bleak world he deals with daily. Deserted by his father at the age of four, neglected by his mother who sometimes forgets to come home at night, and abused by guests in his home, Timmy turns to people that he knows understands him, his neighborhood friends. They are all in the same situation, growing up understanding and seeing only the bad in life, without the love and discipline they so desperately cry out for. Without this they quickly learn to trust no one. They learn to survive on their own, because that is all they have learned so far and that is all they will ever know. Timmy Smith relaxes in his living room watching T.V. and smoking a cigarette. He has been smoking for a year starting when he was ten.

Richard Messina, "Timmy's Dead End Street," in POYi Archive, Item #19517, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/19517 (accessed April 21, 2025).