Relationships

Scenario: You have been notified that your child has been arrested for doing something illegal. Your child has privately admitted to both you and your spouse that he did, in fact, do this thing.

Okay, it’s ethical question moment.

Would you make him accept the consequences, or would you hire the best lawyer you could afford and try to keep him out of trouble? Or is there some kind of middle ground?

A while ago I chatted with Peter Lovenheim, author of the non-fictional narrative In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community On an American Street One Sleepover at a Time, He sipped coffee, and I ate a cupcake. We talked a bit about neighborhoods and neighbors. I even blogged about it.

Given my solid track record in easily making new friends wherever I have lived, it never occurred to me that I might make enemies. After our family moved into a new neighborhood, one neighbor came on particularly strong. She seemed fabulous. She brought me flowers for no reason at all, bought my son special books and funny little toys. She invited me over for tea at her house; I reciprocated with coffee and dessert.

Looking back at it now, I should have seen it coming. She was like that guy you date three times and then he professes his undying love for you. It feels a little premature, but you go with it because it feels good. Passionate. But then one day — out of the blue — he goes all ape-shit on you and breaks up.

In our case, after many months of relaxed interactions, we received one venomous phone call during which my neighbor accused me of doing something (which, for the record, I didn’t do).  It’s all a misunderstanding, I assured my husband. We can totally work this out. That night I planned to clarify, to let her know there was no “situation,” that I had done nothing. I wanted to prove I was innocent. She wouldn’t even come to the door. Finally, her husband came to the driveway and assumed the international sign of a really pissed off person: arms crossed in front of his chest, legs set wide apart, a scowl on his face.

Proverbs 27:17 warns: “Visit your neighbor sparingly / Lest he have his surfeit of you and loathe you.”

I guess I should have paid better attention to Proverbs.

Suddenly, the easy-flowing conversations ended. No more chats about favorite hairstylists, discussions about favorite painters, plumbers or handymen. No more cheery hellos. For a while, I fretted daily at the injustice of it all. I couldn’t believe that Mr. and Mrs. Formerly Such Nice Neighbors could be so rigid and judgmental, even after I’d assured them I hadn’t done the thing they’d accused me of doing.  I couldn’t believe they would bear false witness against their neighbor.

As time has passed, however, my husband and I have found that silence makes a lovely neighbor. Hubby refuses to let Mr. and Mrs. Formerly Such Nice Neighbors change the way he does anything. Hubby still mows the lawn on his big ole riding mower. He plants day lilies and futzes around with the landscaping, constantly relocating perfectly good elephant hostas from one place to another. Sometimes, he still even says hello. Call me petty, but I am not interested in forging any kind of anything with these people.

As I see it, they owe me an apology.

I did learn something from The Formerly Such Nice Neighbors. I learned that while I am likable — and I am — not everyone has to like me. And believe me, there are plenty of people out there who don’t like me, of this I am sure. That being said, the world keeps spinning and the grass keeps growing. I also learned not everyone wants to be neighborly. It’s okay.

As time has passed, I’ve had a chance to focus on my true friends: who they are and the qualities they possess that I appreciate. My closest friends are steadfast, kind, communicative, funny, creative, giving and forgiving. Each of them offers me something to learn – about myself and my place in the world.

With friends like those, who has time to worry about angry folks?

Got any good/funny/awful neighbor stories to share?

Related Articles

• The 25 Types of Neighbors You Are Blessed or Cursed By: See Where You, Your Neighbors Fall (chicagonow.com)
• Who are the people in your neighborhood? Kids need to know (sfgate.com)

When I was a student at Genesee Hills Elementary School in the 1970s, we had quite a bit of free time during which we actually interacted with our peers: during lunch, recess, specials, sure. But also during class. In 3rd grade with Mrs. Marmillo and Mr. Barnello, we enjoyed an amazing invention called “Boy, Girl and Group of the Week.” A concept that would never fly now, I feel fortunate to have been part of this fabulous, classroom environment, and I know dozens of people who likely feel the same way.

Before I tell you about Boy, Girl & Group of the Week, keep in mind, this classroom phenomenon happened in 1976 — more than 30 years ago — so I could be wrong on some of the basics (so for those who may remember, feel free to chime in).

I want to say that on Friday afternoons, students from our two 3rd grade classrooms gathered together to nominate students as Boy and Girl of the Week. Students who went out of their way to do something nice for their peers were considered, so we said things like:

I want to nominate Jeff F. as Boy of the Week because he lent me a pencil when I didn’t have one.

or

I want to nominate Siobhan E. because she got me a tissue when I had a bloody nose, and then she helped me to the nurse’s office.

Meanwhile, our teachers sat quietly and made hash marks (or something) on a clipboard. Unless, we gave too many nominations to the same kid — in which case they would encourage us to look around the room and notice people who had possibly never been nominated, they were pretty silent.

When we finished, our teachers determined and announced the Boy, Girl and Group of the Week. (Maybe it was predetermined. It probably was.) The prize? Winners got the privilege of walking from our elementary school to Burger King, a little less than a mile away, sometime the following week along with our teachers. To get to BK, we walked on roads – not sidewalks. Yes, there were a few cars, but we walked – single-file in sun and in slush – to get to a hamburger, small fries and a soft-drink. It was heaven.

Imagine teachers pulling off this weekly field trip in 2010. It’s practically impossible.

First off, I have a feeling 90% of today’s parents would say they don’t like the idea because Burger King is fattening, and (in case you hadn’t heard), we have an obesity epidemic in our country. Okay, this may be the case when you are eating BK every day. But we weren’t back then. And we used our lunch and recess periods (both of which were longer than they are now) to walk to and from Burger King. The trek was just under 1.5 miles, but we walked briskly, so it was a good healthy walk.

We used our best manners while waiting in line. I remember standing in the BK queue, preparing to place my order — using my own voice to speak to an adult, “One hamburger, please,” I would say, careful to add, “Thank you.” Eating with my teachers and friends was a most amazing reward! We learned so much about each other during our walks to and from school and while sitting in the big booths together. We learned about our teachers’ families, their children. We learned if our classmates had siblings, what color our classmates’ rooms were painted, and if we liked to play the same games. We learned whose parents were divorced. Hell, we learned what the word divorce meant! We learned to speak, and we learned to listen.

I imagine, these days, most parents wouldn’t like the idea of children walking on main roads with traffic. Because people worry about things like that these days. Because someone could get hit by a car! Or get abducted! Or fall into a ditch and twist an ankle! (The last scenario was probably the most likely.)

As far as I know, my parents signed one skinny permission slip to allow me to go on the aforementioned trip off campus to BK and provided me with the requisite dollar or so to purchase my meal. These days, I imagine there would be a 12-page document that would have to be signed by parents, promising to waive their rights to this, that and the other thing. Back then, nobody worried that we were going to get hit by cars or fall in gulches or get kidnapped. Everyone just kind of assumed giving children additional privileges came with giving us additional responsibilities. People sought to broaden our world experience rather than limit our boundaries.

We had so many opportunities to practice civility in elementary school. It was okay to have a little idle chatter time built into our day. The classroom was the place where we learned our academics, but we also practiced our social skills. Today, I would imagine that most administrators would tell parents that there is simply not time for idle chitter-chatter. A few years ago a school administrator told me that “school is not the place for children to make friends.” She argued that kids needed to get involved in extra-curricular activities if they were interested in making friendships. She explained teachers needed to make the most of classroom time to prepare students for standardized tests, that teachers have more to teach than ever.

In 2010, I would argue “the civility piece” has fallen out of the curriculum — along with the belief that there are benefits to idle time. In 1976, it seemed like there was an emphasis on these things, as well as the other things we learned as by-products: patience (eventually everyone got to be Boy or Girl of the Week), paying attention to the little things, actually making an effort to help out a fellow student in need, being a good citizen (not just because it could get you a trip to Burger King but because it felt good). And a million other things, too.

And in this age of technology, a little more emphasis on these seemingly insignificant niceties could go far to help kids plug into each other and their behaviors. I mean, a student might not bully the kid upon whose vote he depends to get some kind of special reward.

And I would argue that sometimes the greatest life-lessons occur when it doesn’t appear that one is learning at all.

But that’s probably a hard sell these days.

Look at this picture. What would the caption read?

In 1985, when I was a senior in high school, my parents allowed me to go on Spring Break to Ft. Lauderdale with my four closest friends. We flew on (the now defunct) People’s Express for $39 each way. (I know this because I still have the ticket stubs in my old scrapbook.) We stayed in an almost completely unfurnished condo, some of us sleeping two to a bed; we shopped and prepared an amazing spaghetti dinner which we cooked for ourselves (careful to put placemats on the floor so as not to get sauce on the new carpet). Now, we were “good girls,” so we didn’t get into too much trouble — but we did do some things that I am kinda sure our parents would have deemed questionable. (I will not post the evidence here.) I will simply ask:

If your 18-year old child asked if he/she could go and spend a week somewhere with friends — without any adult supervision, what would your answer be?

I knew a child who wouldn’t stop asking her mother to buy her a cell phone. Daily, this kid was working her mother over. Negotiations took place at the breakfast table each morning (before coffee) for weeks until, finally, my friend cracked and bought her daughter a basic cell phone which came with the caveat: Use this in emergencies only. The child seems to have been appeased.

I have somehow managed to avoid the whole “cell phone conversation” by getting my child an iPod Touch (which, by the way, he is currently not allowed to use for an undetermined period of time due to the fact that Boy was so enthralled with his new “toy,” he failed to respond to his father’s clearly audible, repeated request to go and brush his teeth. )

But I digress.

But it’s not a huge digression. I know kids who have had cell phones as early as the 3rd grade. Children have become the earliest adopters of our newest technologies. They pick up on how things work quickly, and we are awed by their abilities to understand what seem to many adults to be such complicated devices.

In an article by Marguerite Reardon, the writer asks the big question: Are cell phones safe? For years, studies have provided conflicting conclusions, and today, there is still no clear answer. One professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, Dr. Henry Lai, has been studying the effects of cell phone radiation on humans since 1980 and says: “There is cause for concern.”

For years, researchers and scientists have debated whether radiation from radio frequencies used to wirelessly transmit phone calls could adversely affect the health of cell phone users. And as more people throughout the world use cell phones and make these devices an integral part of their lives, concerns have grown as to long-term public health issues.

In 2009, it was estimated that in the U.S. alone, more than 270 million Americans (more than 87 percent of the population), now owns a cell phone, according to data compiled by the Marist Poll Marketing Group.

A handful of studies that have looked at the long-term effects of using cell phones suggest people who use a cell phone for at least an hour each day over a 10-year period are at an increased risk of developing brain tumors. This research also suggests that tumors are more likely to be on the side of the head where the phone is most often used.

More recently, researchers have grown particularly concerned about the adverse effects that cell phone usage could have on children. Some research indicates that children are five times more likely to get brain cancer if they use mobile phones, but other research efforts have found results inconclusive.

So here’s the paradox: Everyone worries about the “safety” of his/her  children; of course we do. What parent doesn’t? But are we thinking long-term enough? There is concern that children who start using cell phones at a young age will be exposed for a longer period of time over their entire lifetime to cell phone radiation. Researchers are particularly concerned about the risk of cell phones with children, because children’s nervous systems are not fully developed, their brains contain more fluid than brains of adults, which allows for deeper penetration of radiation.

There has been enough concern among public health officials in various parts of the world to warrant warnings. For example, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), a government regulatory body located in the home country of Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world, is urging parents to restrict cell phone use for children, suggesting parents encourage kids text rather than talk.

France has proposed banning advertisements encouraging children younger than 12 to use cell phones, and it has also warned parents that children under age six are particularly at risk. The Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. does not go so far as issuing a warning, but the agency recommends minimizing potential risk by using hands-free devices and keeping cell-phone talk to a minimum.

Finland, France and Israel have all issued warnings on their government websites about children using cell phones, while the U.S. has issued no such warnings.

I am certain the day will come when my son will get a cell phone. I don’t know what the moment will look like or what the trigger will be: an event like a birthday, or an actual breakdown in the systems that we currently have in place. I do know that when he gets a phone, that phone will be his responsibility and if he loses it, it will not be treated like a sock or a paperclip. And it will be when it is abundantly clear that he really needs a cell phone. Right now, the school he attends is in our backyard, so if he forgets something at school, the answer to almost any question is some variation of “Well, why don’t you just run back there and see if you can get in the school?” One day, perhaps when he is in high school and starting to drive or if he starts going to huge fencing competitions without us (or if he figures a way to argue his case and win), he can have the most basic cell phone of his choice. Until then, I’m going with the Europeans and the Israelis.

Have a quick listen to this podcast by Dr. Devra Davis, Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Institute, and see what you think:

What do you do with all this information?

Related Articles

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Ever been stuck at a red light behind a school bus? Of course you have. You know that moment when the kids suddenly realize, Hey! We’re not moving! And there’s a car back there with a person in it! And then they all start frantically waving?

It’s definitely a decision moment.

There are non-wavers who live among us.

I just don’t happen to be one of them.

Recently I found myself stuck behind a school bus, facing The Rowdy Boys, and I had one of those flashback moments a la Wayne’s World when I remembered my time spent at the back of the bus. These days, most school buses (in these parts anyway) have two parallel rows and an aisle with an emergency safety exit in the back; in the 1970s-80s, on the buses at my district’s alma mater, the back seat of the bus was one long row that extended from one side of the bus to the other. (If there were ever an emergency, I think we were supposed to kick out the rear window with our feet and jump out.) Or something.

A “walker” from kindergarten until fifth grade, I wasn’t introduced to school bus culture until middle school. In sixth grade, I made sure to sit in the front of the bus — close to the driver, but by eighth grade, I was definitely back seat material. I was soooo cool, wearing my cool jeans that pressed against the aged, red cushion where generations of cool kids sat before me. I sat with the smokers and the naughty girls and the angry boys. I read graffiti scribbled on the walls, watched people carve their initials into the metal bus walls, felt the bus move and sway beneath me. We tried to figure out the lyrics to The Sugar Hill Gang‘s “Rappers Delight.” We exchanged dirty jokes. We made plans to hang-out out after school.

But the bus I trailed the other day was peopled with elementary school aged innocents who smiled and laughed  and acted like goofballs, making faces and sticking out tongues. Separated by a little metal, glass, and asphalt, they probably felt like I did in eighth grade: Cool. Maybe a little bit naughty. Waving to a stranger in her car? What would their mommies say?

I made them work for it a little bit. They flapped their arms furiously, and I smiled. Eventually, just before the light turned green, I waved. Because I always wave back. And, of course, they loved it. I saw them whooping it up, high-fiving each other, as if they’d placed bets on whether or not I’d return their advances. (Maybe I am underestimating those elementary schoolers. Maybe they did place bets! Maybe that kid in the red Old Navy shirt won a lot of money because I actually waved.)

For kids, the bus is a buffer, a zone between the world of school and home, and the ride serves a dual purpose. It is a convenience (read: Mom doesn’t always have to be the chauffeur), but the bus-ride also provides time for kids to mentally shift gears from school — the land of increasing independence and increasing work and increasing expectations — and home, the land of dependence, where they are not the boss and there is homework to be done and sports to prepare for and instruments to practice and parents who still want to hear about every detail of the day, even if the kids themselves aren’t interested in sharing.

When you see kids on a bus, know they are between worlds. Time-traveling, if you will. And, if you are stuck behind a bus and the kids actually recognize your acknowledge in a positive manner, be glad. Just like adults, some of them have had fabulous days filled with glitter-glue and rainbows. But some of them have had lousy days. Dark days. Days where they have been mistreated and misunderstood. Maybe they have been bullied or made to feel small.

I say everyone should wave to kids on school buses; it’s such a little gesture, a little reaching out. It doesn’t cost anything, and it can bring so much joy.  Oh, but here’s a quick tip; only do the waving thing if the kids initiate it first. Otherwise, you’re just a creepy dork in the car behind the bus.

What do you remember from your school bus days?

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My son just started middle school after Labor Day, and everything seems to be going really well. So why am I already battening down the hatches? Because I remember how I was in middle school. I was evil. Just impossible. Everything my parents did was horrifyingly embarrassing. My friends were my world. I wanted the blue Fair Isles sweater that Jodi wore, the Bermuda bag that Marla carried, the clogs that Melissa had on her feet. I wanted to hang out with Dina and Noelle and Todd and Adam as much as humanly possible. We lived to torture our poor, pathetic French teacher. Every moment was filled with emotion and drama. I look back sometimes and wonder: Seriously, what was I thinking?

Apparently in the last decade,  a fair bit of research has been conducted to gather biological evidence as to why teenagers go a little bit haywire. Apparently, the teenage brain begins a massive shift around the prefrontal cortex around 12-13 years of age. The pre-frontal cortex is the thinking part of the brain that allows us to consider the consequences of our actions, and that part of the brain kind of stops working as well as it had before. Parents don’t always understand the neurological changes that their children’s brains are undergoing: changes that can cause their once docile children to take big risks and make big mistakes. The following article is an excerpt from a fabulous piece of reporting by Patti Neighmond for npr.org. You can read it, or you can listen to it here.

Laura Kastner, who along with Jennifer Wyatt has written a new book, Getting to Calm: Cool-headed Strategies for Parenting Tweens and Teens. For more than 30 years, Kastner has helped parents and children work toward greater calm in the home. In the book, Kastner presents a typical scenario:

Your child goes to a sleepover. The kids sneak out, go to someone’s house, and spray shaving cream all over the house and cars. The police come, give them a tongue lashing and send them back to the host family, who promptly delivers them home to you in the middle of the night.

“Sometimes, parents say, ‘What were you thinking?'” says Kastner. “And the joke’s on us. They weren’t thinking. They were running like wildebeests in the canyon. Just go, go, go. You know, they were flooded and excited and not really thinking through the consequences of their actions.”

In situations like this, Kastner says the first line of defense for parents is to stay calm. Tell the teen to just go to bed and that you will deal with consequences tomorrow. Ask them to write a note of self-reflection — about their regrets, why they went off track, what they would do differently if given another chance, and what skills they might need to avoid the situation in the first place.

Kastner suggests even writing a letter of apology to the host family, the family that got shaving-creamed, and maybe even the police officer who wasted his time responding to the incident. Based on the quality of this self-critique, Kastner says, parents can then determine discipline or consequences.

“It will be small, medium or large, based on the quality” of the self-critique and how much the parents believe their children learned from the mistake, she says. Parents might even have the teenager suggest their own discipline. And there’s an added benefit to the teens’ writing. It engages the “thinking” part of the brain, and gets the teenager away from the emotional frenzy of the night.

I, of course, love the idea of integrating writing as a way of getting kids to connect with thoughts to their actions. This is a strategy I have used in my classroom when students have been misbehaving. I simply hand the offending student a pre-written sticky note which instructs that student to sit out in the hall and write a full-page explanation as to why he/she has been asked to leave my class.

The exercise works for several reasons: First, it immediately eliminates the distraction from the classroom. Second, the student has to go outside and really think about what he/she was doing. Sometimes it is the first time the student has ever had the opportunity to even consider that what he/she has been doing might be considered annoying/bothersome, anti-intellectual, etc. Third, once the student is done, he/she returns to the class where we calmly conference. There has been time to cool down. I get to read the student’s words. The student generally recognizes his/her behavior as problematic to the larger group dynamic and we come to some kind of understanding. Sometimes, adjustments need to be made: maybe we decide to move the student’s seat so he/she is closer to me and further away from a friend or a loud hallway. Always, we have a clearer understanding of the other. And last, I have a piece of paper documenting the student’s infraction so if the behavior recurs, well . . . I have proof from the student’s own hand that establishes there has been an ongoing problem.

I have done all this for years, however, until I heard this report on NPR, it had never occurred to me to use this same kind of writing technique as a kind of disciplinary technique with my own child. (Not that I have had to. Yet.) But I love the idea of it.

So guess who has a blank composition notebook in the kitchen cupboard ready to go, should that moment of crisis arise. (Note: if you act fast, those notebooks are twenty-five cents at Target. If your peeps are just entering middle school, I suggest you pick up a few!)

And while we’re on the subject, anyone brave enough to share an example of a “wild and crazy thing” you did when you were between the ages of 13 and 17 years old? Anyone? Anyone?

I am reposting an article that was published on August 17, 2010 by Carla K. Johnson, a medical writer. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in the halls at the community college where I work, and have heard students approach before I have ever seen them coming. So many of them wear their ear buds between classes, to get from point A to point B, I have often thought the constant noise has to be having some kind of impact on their hearing.

Turns out, it is.

Study: 1 in 5 US teenagers has slight hearing loss

CHICAGO — A stunning one in five teens has lost a little bit of hearing, and the problem has increased substantially in recent years, a new national study has found. Some experts are urging teenagers to turn down the volume on their digital music players, suggesting loud music through earbuds may be to blame – although hard evidence is lacking. They warn that slight hearing loss can cause problems in school and set the stage for hearing aids in later life.

“Our hope is we can encourage people to be careful,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Gary Curhan of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The researchers analyzed data on 12- to 19-year-olds from a nationwide health survey. They compared hearing loss in nearly 3,000 kids tested from 1988-94 to nearly 1,800 kids tested over 2005-06.

While the researchers didn’t single out iPods or any other device for blame, they found a significant increase in high-frequency hearing loss, which they said may indicate that noise caused the problems. And they cited a 2010 Australian study that linked use of personal listening devices with a 70 percent increased risk of hearing loss in children.

“I think the evidence is out there that prolonged exposure to loud noise is likely to be harmful to hearing, but that doesn’t mean kids can’t listen to MP3 players,” Curhan said.

Loud music isn’t new, of course. Each new generation of teenagers has found a new technology to blast music _ from the bulky headphones of the 1960s to the handheld Sony Walkmans of the 1980s. [But] today’s young people are listening longer, more than twice as long as previous generations, said Brian Fligor, an audiologist at Children’s Hospital Boston. The older technologies had limited battery life and limited music storage, he said.

[And] some young people turn their digital players up to levels that would exceed federal workplace exposure limits, said Fligor. In Fligor’s own study of about 200 New York college students, more than half listened to music at 85 decibels or louder. That’s about as loud as a hair dryer or a vacuum cleaner.

Bottom line, if you can hear someone’s music playing while their earbuds are in, they are probably listening to their music at too loud of a decibel. And while they may hate you, you would be doing them a big favor in asking them to dial down the noise.

Do you let your kids use ear buds? Do you feel they use them at a reasonable listening level? Would you feel comfortable asking a stranger to turn down his/her music?

Related Articles

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Fall Semester 2009. Last year. He sat in the back row. In the only blue desk in a room filled with brown desks. He wore a button up shirt every day. He was quiet. Kept to himself. Initially, he was studious and handed in each assignment. His grammar was impeccable, his writing strong. He had a wry sense of humor and wrote about a time when he had worked in a Styrofoam factory. How the white stuff stuck to him, went up his nose, in his mouth, made him sneeze and sputter. He learned quickly he didn’t want to ever work in a Styrofoam factory. We all laughed when he read his piece aloud. Not at him: at his material. He was funny.

I expected great things. In fact, I was so sure he was going to produce great things, he kind of fell off my radar.

About six weeks into the semester, we hit the argumentative research paper unit, and he started to fall apart. He didn’t hand in his intentions for his topic, thus he never had a topic approved. I worried because he didn’t seem to be moving forward. While other students worked on paraphrasing and interview questions for their “experts,” he sat still in his blue chair, looking stiff and uncomfortable.

Finally, I asked him to stay after class. I went to his desk. I asked him if he had started the research paper. No. Did he have a topic? No. Did he need help selecting one, I implored. It was not too late. No. Could I help him? No. Would he let me know if I could help him? No. That was the one that stopped me. Chilled me, actually. No? I tried to look into his face, his eyes for something, but he was looking down, angry at being detained, at the questioning.

“You won’t contact me if you need help?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

I tried to explain to him that up until the research paper, he had an A — the only A grade in the class! He shrugged, underwhelmed. I told him he could still save his grade, the semester, but without the research paper, it would be impossible to pass, especially since he had not met any of the deadlines during the process. I told him I was worried about him.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I understand what I’m doing.”

The next day I received an email from Records and Registration that read:

We regret to inform you that we have been notified of the death of one of your current students (name here, and student number). We have noted this in the student information system so that all parties reviewing the student’s record will be informed.

Please make the appropriate notation in your records.

I was stunned. The appropriate notation? Was there a code I was supposed to put in my book? “D” for deceased? “S” for suicide? I knew I had to have been among the last to speak with my student. I replayed our conversation in my head endlessly. “I understand what I am doing” suddenly sounded much more ominous. I had missed it. I had missed a strong student’s decline from excellence into despair. Something was going on with him, and I had missed it. Maybe the better notation was “IF”: I. Failed. Or IF I had only known.

Later, I learned that my former student’s chosen method was to wrap his car around a telephone pole. He had been driving very fast. Very intentionally. He understood what he was doing.

Meanwhile, I was devastated. None of my students noticed the sudden absence of their classmate because students come and go all the time at community college. People drop out for many reasons: job or family obligations, financial issues, poor grades, poor attendance.  I spent the remaining weeks of the semester staring at that lone blue desk amidst the sea of brown desks and felt desperate.

I have had former students die – through illnesses, accidents, even at their own hand — just not during the semesters I taught them. Last year’s experience was a first for me. I have long known that I cannot transform them all into English teachers (nor would I want to), but I guess I always thought out of all their teachers, I would be the one they might come to if they needed help. I would be the one they would choose.

Last year, I learned that was a ridiculous idea, and that I cannot save them all.

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