Death

In light of Monday's (senseless! tragic!) shooting at Virginia Tech University, I suppose I should scrap the topic I had planned to make light of this week, that topic being how death is handled in a public high school. But damn it, I had planned to write about this long before Hop Soy blew three gaskets and went on his (senseless! tragic!) rampage, and it's not as if I'm going to joke about those (senseless! tragic!) school deaths. My god, this (senseless! tragic!) episode happened just this week, and it will be a good 10-12 months before it's appropriate to crack wise about it. Plus, I'd rather face the self-righteous wrath of a few anonymous emailers than have to suffer the bitingly sarcastic blows of Editor Joel, who can deliver a deadly .9mm shot to the soul with his devastating barbs. So onward with the death column.

When any mass murder incident occurs, and especially when it takes place at a school, the next day all the schools that didn't get shot up are filled with teachers grasping to take advantage of this nutcase-provided "teachable moment." Teachers aren't the most creative types, so most of them spend their day talking about the killings, spewing platitudes and clichés that the kids tune out by the end of first period. My second period came to class the day after the carnage, already begging me for some kind of work, pleading with me not to talk anymore about the massacre, because their first period teachers had worn them out with teary-eyed talk about how they should take advantage of all the student support services we offer. You know, in case any of them are pissed off enough to commence firing during second lunch.

I could not oblige my second period, or any other class, however. I started each class by assuring them that should a crazed gunman (see, I use these clichés, too) ever go blasting through our school, they could count on me to ... be the first one out the door, and that if they wanted to be saved by a heroic teacher, their best bet would be to follow my Carl Lewis-like dash toward the nearby safety of the woods.

One student asked, "But what if I had no legs, and I had fallen out of my wheelchair. What would you do?"

I replied, quite honestly, that I would gladly pick him up and, because his missing legs would make him lighter, use him as a handy human shield during my screaming, panicked exit from the building.

I used this joke in every class, and the kids laughed, and I laughed, too, but I was laughing at their laughing, because they had no idea that I was telling the truth. Being in the D.C. area, we lived through 3 - 4 weeks of tension during the D.C. Sniper saga about five years ago. When we had our mandatory October fire drill, I made five kids stand around me in a circle when we left the building, then once outside, I cowered in the center of this adolescent human shield. Everyone was in hysterics. "Oh, that Bitters is at it again!" I was laughing, too, and more importantly, I was safe. It was a win-win situation. But only because the shooting never started. Then it would have been a win-lose situation, with me coming out on the victorious, still-living side, and some no-longer-laughing-but-now-bleeding-from-a-gaping-chest-wound student on the losing side.

But the sniper never visited our area. However, death has often visited our school, usually in the form of car accidents. We twice had siblings die in crashes. You can bet those deaths cast a black pall over the school for days. I would think that losing a child would rank Number One on the "Shit A Person Could Live Without" list, so having two children die at the same time must be beyond comprehension. Those were dark days, and even I didn't dare go for any laughs that week. (Although I did take advantage of the grief and showed a movie, because, you know, there was no point in trying to actually teach under those circumstances.)

Not all the deaths have been auto-related. We had one girl who died after sniffing propane in a pathetic attempt to get high. I know our school draws kids from some poor areas, but I didn't know until that blue Monday morning that some of our kids were so poor that they couldn't even afford a tube of airplane glue from the local CVS for their getting stoned purposes. Sniffing propane? After hearing that, I never complained again about my deprived childhood. We might not have been able to take vacations, but we always had a tube of unused glue around the house for sniffing, because my brother and I realized early in life that building models is suckass boring, so we never finished a single model. That didn't prevent my parents from placing under our tree every Christmas some vintage war plane that I would half build before being overcome by boredom, or perhaps my ADD, or perhaps the soothing scent of the glue. Then I'd move on to burning my plastic Army men in the woods, saving the rest of the model glue for those long, bleak winter weekends.

We had another kid who, while crawling down from his tree stand after an unsuccessful day of trying to murder deer, accidentally shot himself in the leg and bled to death at the base of the tree. Tragic. I remember only a couple of suicides, but only one in any detail. I had this very strange kid in my homeroom about 12 years ago. He was one of those kids whose strangeness announced itself with every movement, every word, every ounce of his being. I was so grateful to the scheduling gods that I had this first-class weirdo only in my daily seven-minute homeroom for only the first month of school. I had to jump all over a couple of assholes that gave him a hard time the first few days of school. They tried to assure me that this was business as usual, as it was standard operating procedure for the kids in that grade to abuse this kid.

The abuse lasted all of three days, but not because of my stern warning. Thursday, when I called the roll, I called his name and got no reply. I called his name again. A kid named Tommy, who was half listening on the other side of the room, interrupted his conversation and said, in a voice devoid of any emotion or concern, "Oh, he hung himself last night," then went right back to his conversation, which I think was about dirtbikes. In a rare moment of maturity, I gave the kid what-for and told him how inappropriate that type of joke was, and that, although I had no control over this class for the rest of the day, for these seven minutes, that poor young man, strange as he may be, would not suffer any abuse in my class. Tommy once again interrupted his conversation - I think he was talking about street bikes now - and said that he was not joking. And he wasn't. The abused über-nerd had gone into the woods behind his house and hung himself. And the school didn't miss a beat. No grief counselors were called. No melodramatic girls collapsed sobbing in the halls. No buses were arranged to ship kids to the funeral. It remains the saddest death I remember at the school. But only in retrospect. I know that somewhere deep down in my younger, immature heart, I was probably glad that my homeroom problem had disappeared.

Compare that death to the March '92 death of Saint Steven, a young man you see the likes of once every five years or so. This kid was incredible. Ranked in the top three in one of the smartest classes I've seen go through this school. Supremely talented three-sport athlete. Editor of the school newspaper who did a marvelous undercover report on drug trafficking at our school. Loved by teachers and students alike. I never even had the kid (hence the high-achieving high school career), and I adored him. We had plans to play tennis one Sunday afternoon after I got back from a late-winter weekend at the beach. I got back into town and found a message telling me that Steven crashed into a tree the night before while driving home from a party. He had been drinking, of course. His mother was going to have him removed from life support. She did, and he died.

The school damn near shut down on this one. Nothing got done for an entire week. Teachers had to see grief counselors. Busloads of kids were shipped to the funeral. Teachers delivered tearful, eloquent eulogies, one of which included the phrase "... helped me see the face of God." (Okay, so some teachers got carried away. Like I said, we are an uncreative bunch who rely on clichés.) But almost as disturbing as the death was the comment made by one of his friends to a guidance counselor, who was conducting one of those grief sessions. This girl, one of our haughty little prepsters who would assure anyone she met that her shit did not, ever, under any circumstances, stink, was struggling to voice the overwhelming feeling of frustration she felt about Steven's death. She finally screamed, "Why did it have to be Steven! Why couldn't it have been one of those other kids, like those rednecks or burnouts!" I'd like to say that she was just overcome with grief and that really wasn't what she was like, but she was a stuck up little bitch from her first day of ninth grade, and that comment was her to the core. (Cliché number three, for those keeping score!)

Teachers aren't much better in the Appropriate Reaction to Death Sweepstakes. One time we had two students die in a car accident. Not two weeks later, two more of our kids died in another accident. Seven of us teachers were out of town for a work conference at the time of the second tragedy. The septet consisted of me, another guy, and five women, most of whom were your standard issue, cookie cutter teachers, the kind who are moved to tears by student deaths. I guess the word "normal" might describe them. It was early evening, and we were all walking around the waterfront area in some big east coast city. You know the waterfront, touristy area I refer to. Every city with water has one. You can usually find a fudge shop there. And a kite store. And a magnet store. And a Gap. While the ladies stopped, too easily entertained by the fudge makers' screaming performance, the other guy and I walked ahead to scope out that night's drinking spot. It was then that he got a call informing him of the latest two deaths.

We were faced with a dilemma. Tell the ladies what had happened and possibly ruin what was going to be a great night of drinking with co-workers whom I could tolerate only through the glaze of alcohol, or not tell them, which would allow them - and especially us - to have fun drinking, after which we could tell them the news, and they could then wail through their hangovers. While this latter choice would no doubt allow for fun at the bar, we worried about the wrath we'd face if we told them later. Now I ask you, is that the thought process of an alcoholic or what? Our main concern was not to ruin our drinking. However, we broke down and told the ladies what had happened. We told them near the fudge stand, ruining the cheery good feeling provided them by the acting-school dropout of a fudge turner. The women were devastated. For about five minutes. Then we went to a bar and drank until last call. Every half hour or so someone would say, "Oh my god, that is just so tragic." Then we'd change the subject and keep drinking and laughing. Then we got a slice of pizza on the way home.

But I have one school death story that trumps them all. Perhaps it explains the nonchalance with which kids seem to greet the news of most deaths. Maybe they learn it at home, since so many of them are exposed to untimely deaths of friends and relatives who just can't seem to pay their dealers in a timely manner. I made a rare trip to the teachers' lounge one day to get a Coke. A nutcase spazz of a teacher was pounding out a number on the phone, and, having experienced her delicious raving lunacy in parent conferences firsthand, I figured I'd stick around and listen to her tear a parent a new one.

Before the parent picked up, the teacher covered the mouthpiece and said the student's name to me. "Delonte Washington." No other information was needed. The offense didn't matter. I knew the kid. He was half retarded, half flaming asshole. I sat back to relish her tirade. Her first words were, "Hello, I am Mrs. So and So from Very Average Public High School, and I am Delonte's Spanish teacher. Could I speak to [here she referred to the card with the kid's personal information on it] Mr ... Washington?" Now, the rest of this conversation is from a combination of what I remember the teacher saying, and what she told me the person on the phone said. It went:

Student Relative: "Who?!"

Teacher: "Um ... Mr. Washington."

Relative: "What Mr. Washington you want?"

Teacher (getting irritated, consults card again): "Mr. Lionel Washington."

Relative: "Who?"

Teacher (rolling her eyes at me): "Lio–nel Wash–ing–tonnnnn."

Relative: "Oh, he die last night."

Teacher: " ... "

Relative: "You wanna talk to his brother?"

Teacher: " ... "

Relative: "You still there?"

Teacher: "Excuse me. I was trying to call Mr. Lionel Washington, the father of Delonte Washington. I'm his Spanish teacher and ..."

Relative: "Yeah, this da place. His dad die last night. He get stabbed. Can I take a message?"

Needless to say, Delonte's misbehaving during Spanish verb conjugation, which was never high on the Washington Family List of Priorities, dropped a few more slots that day. And no news reports described his dad's death as tragic! and senseless!

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.