WENDELL - As an 8-year-old, Joshua Jenkins faced a tough choice -- follow the poverty, crime-ridden path of his relatives or pursue an education and risk losing the love of his family.

Jenkins chose "the road less traveled." Robert Frosts' words, from his famous poem "The Road Not Taken," literally ripped Jenkins' world apart.

Jenkins told Wendell Middle School students last Wednesday how the words of the poem spoke to him as a child. He said literature can unleash the power in us all to change our lives. The way Jenkins sees it, we only get one shot at life on earth, and we better decide what we want to do with it.

For Jenkins, life has been about overcoming obstacles; as a 4-year-old, he remembers coming home to marijuana smoke in Elkin, a town on the edge of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. But Jenkins has also had his share of joy; the Heritage Middle School English teacher got married Saturday.

He was at Wendell Middle School last week at the invitation of Jenee Etheridge, who worked with Jenkins when she taught at Heritage.

Weeping, Jenkins told of reading books, their power moving him so deeply and speaking to him about the human condition, which he understood all too well by living in the depths and the heights of experience. He peppered his comments with literature, reading poems and relaying how they impacted him.

It would be an understatement to say that Jenkins' life has been storied. Three of his uncles served time in prison -- two on drug convictions and a third for attempted murder. He grew up outside of Elkin, in Jenkinsville, a community synonymous with crime and poverty.

But Jenkins graduated from Appalachian State University and wrote sports for the Elkin paper. He went back to N.C. State and East Carolina Univerisity to study school administration and writing. He has been both a reporter and freelance writer.

Jenkins experienced all of this success, yet battled his own demon -- his weight. At his heaviest, he weighed more than 400 pounds. When Jenkins told the students he had lost half of his body weight with the help of gastric bypass surgery and was to marry Saturday, they broke into applause.

He peppered his story with self-deprecating tales like the time he and his friend, Dawn, both heavy, were cornered by a bull and ran for the fence. Dawn, he recalled, always got what she wanted and wore a jovial exterior. He never knew she was in pain until she committed suicide.

Jenkins admonished the teenagers to show their true faces and "take off their masks." He also said teachers could be friends who would help them through the hard times.