Losing a Recent Student

On Tuesday morning, the faculty and staff at my school was called to the lecture hall. There, the Dean of Operations tearfully broke the news that one of our recent students had been killed in a car accident the night (or early morning) before.

We've had a lot of staff turnover, so for some her name meant nothing. Others of us, however, worked closely with this young lady every day for years. Speaking for my myself, I taught her either English or Advisory for over four years. I am distraught beyond words...

That doesn't mean, of course, that staff members unfamiliar with D were unaffected. It's always tragic when a child of 18 dies, no matter the circumstances, and most new staff members had to aid in supporting distraught students. D was a fellow student and peer of the group of kids that graduated in June, so many kiddos remain that were very close to her.

I teach in a very small town, and one of the great things is how everyone comes together in times of tragedy, whether they get along otherwise or not. Everyone in this small town is lifting high D's spirit to heaven and keeping her parents, siblings, and close friends in their thoughts and prayers. I fear that when the shock of this tragedy wears off, the gossip mill, the biggest thing in any small town, will go into overdrive. For right now, love is abounding, as it should be, and love and prayers for D are all over Facebook and the accident site and in the halls of my school.

D. is not the first student I've lost (RIP Teddy D...please show D. the ropes in heaven...you will like her, everybody does), but she is the one I had most recently and one I had an extremely close connection with at one point.

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but most teachers refer to their students as "my kids" or "my kiddos". For over four years, D. was one of my kids....and because I am me, she will be forever.

These are the things I will always, always remember about D.:

1. The Mickey Mouse sweatshirt she frequently wore. Every time I see Mickey attire, I will think of D.

2. The way she greeted me with, "Hey, Miss Loud, hey Miss Loud, hey!" every time I saw her.

3. The ability she had to connect with a book. D. did not love to read (although I'm pretty sure she in general liked it). When D. found a book that called out to her, she would devour it in a matter of days. She would write about it insightfully. She would discuss it intelligently and thoughtfully. 

4. She adored her niece and wrote often in her journal about babysitting and time spent with the little girl.

5. She was loved by many different factions of students. Looking at D's Facebook wall, outpouring of emotions are coming from students of all social groups, all ages and grades. She was well-known; it's safe to say that she transcended most typical "cliques".

6. Although D was delightfully sassy, she had a heart of gold. Her laugh was infectious, and she shared it generously with pretty much everyone.

7. I once gave a writing assignment where my students had to write about a "defining moment" in their lives. Some students didn't understand the depth I was looking for ("a defining moment for me was when the dog ate my homework"), but D wrote the most poignant defining moment essay I have ever read. I will never forget D's defining moment and that she was willing to share it with me.

8. D's handwriting was like the cliche of what "girl handwriting" looks like in the 2000s...it's pretty, but big...a little bit of cursive combined with a little bit of print. She filled many class journals with this interesting script...

9. D did not like to read aloud or share answers she came up with for questions in school. She tended to say in a melodramatic voice, "I just don't know, Ms. Loud. I think maybe you'd better ask someone else." The irony, of course, is that she had great insight and very often correct "answers". I spent years trying to convince D that she was a smart girl that would never, ever be dismissed as "the stupid kid". I wish I had been able to convince D of her potential and how to believe in herself a little bit more. She knew that I cared, knew that I wanted her to succeed, knew that I believed she could succeed...but she never totally believed in her own potential at school. I wish with all my heart that I had tried harder...

10. D had a tremendous zest for life. She lived fully every day that she was alive, and there are some people (including myself) that need to learn how to do that, how to suck the marrow from the bones of life and find passion in the mundane. D taught me that, if you are bored or unhappy or lonely or thinking bad thoughts, you need to find it within yourself to change that. It's not always easy, but her grit pulled her out of any unhappiness and forced her to focus on finding happiness, humor, and hope.

If you are a parent, as I am, please hug your children extra tightly today. 

Every child is a gift, a joy, a potential for greatness on his or her own terms. D taught me that, among other things.

She was loved by many (every time I saw her mother in town, we chatted about D and what a good kid she was and what she was up to these days). Her Facebook wall is an outpouring of grief from friends and former classmates that are in shock and completely brought to their knees by this terrible, tragic loss.

The site of the accident has become a shrine to D (pics taken from Facebook walls of those honoring D)

The world will sparkle a little less without D, but she was the kind of person that touched pretty much everyone she met in some way or another. For that gift, she has impacted many, many people and left many legacies for those she left behind to follow.

D, I will always be honored that I was your teacher. I was proud of you all the time, more than you know. 

Fly high, beautiful angel...you will always be loved by those of us here on earth lucky enough to have had you in our lives.

I will never forget you, D ❤️

Friday Fragments--A Short Overview of My Week

I'm really into the whole "Friday Fragments" thing ... what a great way to do a quick catch-up on the week :-)

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So I got my hair cut last night.

It was kind of interesting because I went through a long phase of really not caring what I look like.  However, the grays were starting to get to me, and I realized that I'm 34 years old and, realistically speaking, the days when I can look really good are limited.  Plus, I'm single and looking, right ;-)?

My hairdresser was great ... I explained that I've decided that I want to start looking good (like, wear my contacts every day instead of my glasses and so on), so I gave her complete artistic license with both the color and the cut.  I'm glad that she didn't go far from my natural hair color, though ...

I was also reminded while trying to take pictures of it so that my friends could all see it via Facebook and Twitter how truly atrocious I am at taking pics of myself.

To wit ...

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On Wednesday, my mother brought Addie and Belle up to visit my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew at their cabin in Maine.  My aunt and her partner were also there along with a lot of other cool people.  I was sorry to miss out, but I had to work in the morning and then had a dentist appointment in the afternoon (my life is currently revolving around dentists between Belle, Addie, and me).

Anyway, a good time appeared to be had by all :-)

On the way home, though, there was a very bad accident on the highway.  My mom and the girls were stuck in traffic for almost three hours ... they were about five minutes from home, but because the accident was so bad there was nothing they could do but wait.

Addie was especially shaken up by this because she is petrified of car accidents, particularly those involving big trucks.  My hearts go out to the victims of this terrible accident, and my thanks go out to whatever higher power exists for keeping my family safe.

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I am loving the summer school gig, even though I grumble about it from time to time.

Last week was especially exciting because I came up with an amazing lesson (actually, I totally stole an amazing lesson that one of my former colleagues did, but of course I adapted it a bit).

We'd been working on sequencing, following directions, and precision of language.  I felt like things were going well until I asked my students to write directions for how to make a peanut butter sandwich and most of the responses were something like:
1.  Put peanut butter on the bread.
2.  Eat it.

So I figured I'd try to come up with a creative way to get the point across ... and thus the robot game was born.  Basically, I brought in a bag of props (ranging from straws to a flyswatter to chocolate syrup), and the kids worked in small groups to give me, "the robot", directions for what to do with the props.

They loved it ... and also learned the very things (directions, sequencing, and precision of language) I'd been trying to get across.  To a child, they were able to articulate what they could have done differently and why some of the directions didn't get the results they'd envisioned because they weren't specific enough.

Regardless, I ended up covered with chocolate syrup, animal cracker crumbs, applesauce, and sticky garbage bags that were intended to protect my clothes.

Here's what happened  ....

Also, I figured I'd let the kids eat the animal crackers that were left over, and one of them found this:

Sometimes you just don't know whether to laugh or cry ;-)
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I noticed that there is a lot of bad stuff going on in New Hampshire this summer when I was reading through some of my recent Zelda Lily pieces.  I'm giving links and short descriptions, and I hope you check them out. Zelda Lily is a very cool site :-) (and not just my stuff, either!).

+ A 34-year-old mother left two bags of doggie doo and a nasty note on the doorstep of a kid her daughter was having problems with.  That sends a great message to a thirteen-year-old, don't you think?  The idea that some parents want to be "friends" with their kids ... it just scares me badly.

+ A little boy was found dead and abandoned on the side of the road.  It took several days before he was identified as Camden Hughes of Texas ... and that evidence points to his mother as the one who killed him.

+ A man was found guilty of the rape of a fifteen-year-old girl in his church congregation ... fourteen years after the fact.  In spite of the guilty verdict, it does not exactly give rape victims a lot of encouragement in terms of coming forward.  The girl's treatment by her congregation was dreadful, and this only underscores the myriad of difficulties faced by rape victims that go beyond the act itself.

+ An Amber Alert was issued for a four-month-old baby in order to capture his father, who was wanted for a crime; there was no evidence that the baby was "missing", and it was in fact known that the baby's mother was also with him.  The idea of such an important tool as the Amber Alert being used in kind of an underhanded way bothered me quite a bit.

+ A young mother disappeared without a trace, her abandoned (and still running) car with her baby daughter in the backseat puzzling the heck out of police.  Turns out the woman was killed as the result of a drug deal gone bad, and she went from a media darling to a publicity pariah overnight.

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Finally, I got over my literary snobbery (again ;-)) and read Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy (the other two books are Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) and Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3).  I highly recommend them and once again wonder why I am so reluctant at times to read books that "everyone" is reading; I almost always end up loving them!  So odd ...

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Hope everyone's had a great week :-)

When Garbage and Ice Cream Collide ...

I've posted about my odd sense of humor here before. Sometimes I wonder, in fact, if I'm completely twisted ;) Well, it perpetuated today ... and demonstrated that I've passed the funny bone-tickling that comes from the bizarre onto my progeny.

When I was driving Addie to school this morning, she suddenly yelled, "Oh my God, there was just an accident between a garbage truck and an ice cream truck." And then she started laughing. And then I started laughing. And yeah, you know how that goes ...

The thing is, I want to state very clearly for the record that I would never under any circumstances laugh at the misfortune of others--except that this is clearly exactly what I pretty much did. This kind of bothers me about myself, actually. I hate hypocrisy more than pretty much anything.

I can rationalize it by saying that obviously trash collection companies and ice cream companies have good car insurance. I can further state that it was obviously not a bad accident, just a minor fender bender as they go. However, the fact of the matter is, it was at the very least a fairly serious inconvenience (at the very least) for the two drivers.

Think about it, though. It's humorous on so many levels. For one, the nutritional value of ice cream is pretty close to garbage. The wrappers from the frozen treats sold by one truck eventually end up in the stinky receptacle contained in the other. What are the odds of two trucks of roughly the same size colliding? And, perhaps funniest of all, what the hell was an ice cream truck doing on the road at 6:15 in the morning?

Anyway, I got the giggles bad. I felt like a jerk, but I just couldn't stop laughing.

Addie summed up the whole experience best, though. Wiping tears of laughter from her own eyes, she said, "Oh, so it's going to be one of THOSE days."

In the Blink of an Eye ...

It's utterly amazing how the events of a single moment in time can have repercussions that resonate far beyond.

Pythagorus was in a car accident yesterday (don't worry, he's okay). He was taking his car to the mechanic during his lunch break (I swear this is true) and he was stopped at a traffic light when a woman in the car behind him evidently didn't notice that the light was red and slammed into him going pretty fast. His car knocked into a curb then ricocheted into oncoming traffic (which fortunately managed not to hit him).

He called 911 and was told that they didn't have anyone available to send to the scene of the accident. Pythagorus pointed out that he could see a police officer sitting in his cruiser right in the parking lot of the pharmacy this happened right in front of. He was informed that "that officer is on speeding duty ... but I can try to find someone if you think it's really necessary." Yeah, surreal.

Anyway, it was clearly the other driver's fault, she had car insurance (believe it or not, this is often a problem with automobile accidents in New Hampshire--our state motto isn't "Live free or die" for nothing), and honestly the VW could use an overhaul (or a replacement, if it's considered totaled). Also, we have a PT Cruiser rental car for the duration, so that's a little bit of fun.

Pythagorus was a bit shaken up yesterday, but he didn't seem to be hurt (I suggested he go to the doctor anyway just to be safe, but I'm evidently not that smart). He woke up this morning with his neck so sore he could barely turn his head. Like a lot of men (overly generalized, I know, but it's still true based on my experience), Pythagorus is kind of a baby when he's sick and/or injured. When I have a cold, for example, I manage to make it through a day of work without the benefit of orange juice and chicken soup : ). In his defense, though, the doctor said it was a pretty bad case of whiplash, and they did a bunch of x-rays just in case (everything looked fine) and gave him muscle relaxants and vicodin and the usual happy drugs they give to people in pain (the down side of all this at the moment is that he has fallen quite deeply asleep diagonally, so I think I'll be couching it or sleeping on the floor tonight).

What I can't stop thinking about, though, is how much worse it could have been. Nobody plans to be in a car accident, but in the blink of an eye, there you are. One minute you're driving along in the safety of your car (because I further realized that I tend to think of cars as safe zones--I think this is connected to my fear of thunderstorms ...) and the next, your car is no longer drivable. One split second, when you take your eye off the road because you're reading a text message or you dropped your cell phone under the brake (I manage to do this more than you might imagine possible) or the ketchup in your cheeseburger drips onto your pants or you're rummaging in the glove compartment for a tissue, or ... well, you get the idea.

It's scary to think of the potential of "in the blink of an eye" moments. Pythagorus was very lucky ... but a lot of people aren't.