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Author Wes Moore's mother begins attending an American University & she meets Bill in the black student section and they quickly fall in love with each other.

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- Author Wes Moore's sister Nikki is born
- His mother ends up leaving her first husband, Bill, due to physical & emotional abuse, as well as dealing with his heavy drug addiction.

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- The Other Wes Moore is born

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- Wes meets his father
"Wes, meet your father" (25) - Wes' mother
-wes meets his biological father for the first time
-this unexpected and unwanted interaction acts as the first stepping stone down the wrong path for wes.
-because wes doesn't have any secure role models to look up to & rely on besides his straining mother and his drug dealer brother, Tony, his father is another added aspect to his insecurity of stability.

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- Wes hits his sister which sparks anger in his mother because she was abused by her former husband Bill.
- She did not want him to believe that it was acceptable to hit/abuse people

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- Author Wes' father tragically dies of a medical condition
- This is hard on Wes because his father was a positive influence & role model for him
- Looses stability in his family; lacks people to help guide him through the early stages of his life
- "Daddy are you coming home with us?" (16).

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- The Other Wes' mother, Mary's college funds are dropped
- She had previously enrolled at a community college in Baltimore, but her studies were forced to discontinue
- Out of everyone in her family, she was the first to attend college which is impressive during this time
- She eventually had to drop out because her government funds were being terminated and she could not afford school without them

- Since she could no longer afford tuition, she had to quit her dream of graduating from college and her part-time job at the BMC (Bayview Medical Center) becomes her full-time job

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- Wes gets suspended for getting into a fight while playing a game of ball
- "Wes had a knife in his hand, hurrying to settle the score." (33).
- This decision to settle the situation is another spark that leads him down the wrong path in life
- Instead of listening to his friend Woody trying to stop him from being violent, he ignores it & continues to stab the kid anyway

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- Author Wes makes new friends in his new neighborhood
- "We were showing each other our best and worse ... a brotherhood" (46).
-Beginning of a positive influence for him which he formerly lacked in life
-This eventually doesn't last as his friends begin to fall down the wrong path, & so does he

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- Wes moves to cope with the death of his father & a fresh start of good memories

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- Wes smokes weed for the first time at a party which gives him the idea as an easy way to start making money by selling drugs

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- Gets bad grades & has to repeat 6th grade

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- He caught in a lie about his identity which motivates him to make a better image of himself in life

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- He is using his house as a stash house to store his drug inventory
- "Not only did you lie to me but you were selling drugs and keeping them in my house! (74)
- Wes' mother is livid because of the huge amount of danger he could put his family in.
- She then throws away all of the drugs which throws Wes deeper into the drug trade because he has to pay back all his drug money debt.

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- As he and Shea spray paint their insignias, they get arrested which is another step out the way of a negative and constricting potential life on the line

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- Wes discovers that he got Alicia pregnant which is extremely devastating for him
- Not only is being a father a huge responsibility, but it digs him even deeper into the drug business because he needs money to help support the baby
- This was one of the last things that locked him into the path of life of difficulty

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- Wes' mother forces him to go to military school
- Some boys in his company trick by giving him a map that "leads him home."
- "The directions he had given me were fake" (93).
- When he eventually gets found & brought back to the school, he loses all hope of going back home & his old life he was used to

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- Wes and Dalio are attacked & get called racial slurs

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- As he is doing his usual runs, he is busted by an undercover cop
- After receiving many warnings from his family, he continues to participate in the dangers of the drug market

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- He realizes how sucked into the drug dealer life he is in that he decides that that is his ultimate fate and there's no turning back
- He can't change because of how deep in poverty he is without selling drugs

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- Wes & a group of burglars rob a local jewelry store & while in the act, they kill an off-duty police officer
- Once he steps into the court for his trial, it immediately clicks to him that his life is over
- & that every bad decision he has ever made lead up to the awful and irreversible state of life he is currently in

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- Among Wes' many positive opportunities like studying at Oxford and such, he takes a trip to South Africa
- He compares his life to one of his friends in South Africa
- "I realized the journey I took was never mine alone either" (171). - Wes
- He makes the conclusion on how much his environment has shaped him as a person
- Although many events have happened to him which are uncontrollable, he still had to make decisions & deal with each one on his own
- He believes that the way he dealt with trauma and hard times made him the person he is today
- He went from being arrested to being a Rhodes scholar
- In conclusion, his positive decisions in his life have impacted and lead him into the positive direction his life is in now, but on the other hand, The Other Wes Moore lacked a positive decision mindset which lead him to not succeed in life