At 7.30am on 9 November last year, Bobby Bostic walked out of a prison in MissouriA state in the Midwestern region of the United States.. In the car park, a crowd of supporters were waiting to welcome him - among them a retired judge named Evelyn Baker. Now his friend, she had sent him to jail with the words "You will die in the Department of Corrections".

Bostic had had a bad start in life. Growing up in a deprived family, he started drinking at 10 and taking drugs at 12. By his early teens he was stealing cars.

Things came to a head in December 1995. He and his friend Donald Hutson had been drinking and smoking cannabis when they saw two cars and a truck pull up nearby. The two boys decided to rob the occupants - not realising that they were delivering presents and a Christmas tree to a poor family.

During the robbery two men were shot at. Luckily neither was seriously hurt, but one was grazed by a bullet.

"I didn't even know what I was doing," Bostic says now.¹ "I wasn't trying to kill the dude, or hit him. I can't make excuses for it. I shouldn't have done it, and I regret it."

After fleeing the scene, the boys robbed another woman and stole her car. They were soon arrested and charged with 17 offences.

Prosecutors offered them a deal of 30 years in prison with the chance of paroleThe release of a prisoner before the end of their sentence, on the promise of good behaviour. if they pleaded guilty. Bostic, however, decided to take his chances in court. And because he showed no remorse, Evelyn Baker - Missouri's first black female judge - sentenced him to a total of 241 years.

Today she says that to sentence a teenager to life imprisonment is "ridiculous". She began to have misgivings after reading a scientific article about how young people cannot fully assess the consequences of their actions because their brains are still developing: "But for the same reason, they also have greater capacity for reform."

In prison Bostic became a different person. He read widely and gained a degree from Missouri State University. He wrote four non-fiction books and eight collections of poetry.

In 2016, the US Supreme CourtThe highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. ruled that no juvenile offender should face a life sentence without parole. But the Missouri courts argued that Bostic was not serving a life sentence, just a series of very long ones.

Finally, in 2021, the state's law was changed to allow parole to prisoners like Bostic after 15 years. At his hearing, Evelyn Baker spoke on his behalf.

"I'm still wrestling with a few things," Bostic says. "But other than that, life out here is beautiful, every day. I go through the fridge and look at the variety of things to pick from. A soak in the bath tub - I haven't taken a bath in 27 years! I don't take nothing for granted, nothing."

Out of prison, he says, "It's just good things. People smiling. Little kids waving at you. It's like, this is what life is... This is how things are supposed to be."

Though he needed to be tough in prison, "Deep down inside, you always wanted that humanity... that's life. That's beauty. That's the joy of being a human."

Yes: We get used to our surroundings too easily and fail to notice all the wonderful things around us. We should remember how amazing it is to look at a flower, jump into water or travel in a car.

No: The things that matter in life - that stay with us and change our outlook - are the extraordinary ones. The rest just clutter up our minds, so we should try to ignore them as far as possible.

Or... What is ordinary to one person may be amazing to another. One advantage of spending time with people from other places and other cultures is discovering what we take for granted and they do not.