His middle school was an affluent one. That means it was mostly upper middle class white families. His bullies were sons of MAGAs. The principal and resource officer also profiled non-white kids.

My son is a Persian-American. Some of those privileged white bullies threatened him with the gas chambers. The principal told him it was just words. The coach who heard it, told him to just ignore them. Then two of those same bullies assaulted him and sent him to the emergency room with a serious concussion from which it took six or eight months to recover.

A year later, one of those same boys tried to hit a new Mexican immigrant student. Gray stepped between him and the Mexican student (who spoke almost no English) and ONLY blocked the bully's swing with an ATA wrist hand block. The bully's wrist was hurt. The resource officer dragged them all to the principal's office. Gray was suspended.

It all came out good for Gray, though. He out shown them all — even the principal and resource officer who were profiling him. He was the only child from that middle school to ever get into the local prestigious HSCA for high school. Gray is a kind, empathetic, amazing young man.

Starting at the end of 2019, while still in high school, he worked an internship in EMS, went on to graduate as a fully qualified EMT, was hired straight out of high school and worked through the Pandemic; sure, he burned out and left that to begin a new career in tech. Now, he's almost 21 years old, has a wonderful and kind partner I couldn't love more if she was my natural daughter. Gray also has a circle of friends whose loyalty amazes me. And, he's earning just shy of six figures already.

They tried to break him. They failed.