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Speaker aims to inspire teens to make good choices
MINERAL RIDGE
By the time David Kohout of Talk is Cheap Inc. was halfway through his talk to high-school and middle- school students at Mineral Ridge High School, he had many of them in the palm of his hand.
He said to the audience: “Standing in front of me is ...,” and students gave a resounding answer: “Greatness,” learning his message of raising self- esteem quickly.
The same question asked more than once each time got the same heartfelt answer from students.
Kohout not only talked about bullying, bad behavior, drug or alcohol abuse and other unacceptable behaviors, he also told the students he knew that many of them had problems at home that no one else knows about.
These problems are affecting the way they act and react and have changed their attitudes.
He likened bad behavior to bugs circling a light — they go too close to the light to their death.
“You’re getting attracted to incorrect lights in your life,” Kohout, of Boardman, said.
Kohout said pebbles would be passed out to all students at the assembly, intended to be a reminder that a student in trouble can always turn away from the bad and look for a good way to act.
He recalled a student who emailed him to tell him his story.
The boy’s life was saved by the pebble. It laid on his dresser in his bedroom as he sunk so low he decided the only solution was suicide. The boy lay down on his bed and looked around his room and saw the pebble on his dresser. It stopped him in his tracks. And it changed his mind, he told Kohout in his email.
Talk is Cheap Inc. is a nonprofit organization funded by donations. The organization is geared toward building character, establishing confidence and providing hope in the lives of people everywhere. Kohout is executive director.
He has spoken at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Coast Guard Academy, the Ohio State University football program, Malone College and Westminister University, Mahoning County Drug Court, Wooster College and Youngstown State University, among other venues.
He gave the students an assignment for when they go home from school.
He said regardless of whether you have an abusive father or mother or an uncle who did something improper to you at some point, “When you go home tonight, to whatever bad situation, clean your room!”
He also asked students how many of them have lost a friend because of a Tweet, Facebook comment or text message, and several hands went up. He said those media do not include the voice inflection, which makes all the difference in communication.
He told students that they have been desensitized, citing the example of a little boy who took a handgun and wrapped it in a blanket, shot his stepmother in the head while she slept, then put the gun and blanket away and went to school.
He told students: “I have cutters in the room, users in the room, and some who have just given up.”
He admonished the students to “see what no one else sees. See what everyone else chooses not to see, out of fear, conformity and laziness.”
He also told the students, “The No. 1 thing is: Honor your mother and father.”
Kohout promised students that after his talk, “A few of you will be able to look in the mirror and say, ‘I like me.’”