She wasn’t the closest friend, just a girl that would sit and talk cartoons with us when we all knew we were too old to be watching cartoons. It was the last great chance to be a kid before high school. Our crowds were too far apart. She was popular and pretty and she went to parties where they served more than just root beer. I was dorky and geeky and zit-faced. I ran cross-country and listened to baseball games on the radio. I wasn’t in the lowest clique, among the kids who played Magic cards and had graphing calculators. Truth be known, we picked on those kids mercilessly. I say “we,” but I was too cowardly to even pick on a kid, so I’d just watch it happen and occasionally egg on a friend.
On the bus, though, the social hierarchy ceased. A magic card kid and a preppy girl could be friends. A skater could talk to a jock. It was like leaving prison and all the racism about prison gangs leaves and a minority can now breath and relax and even make friends with a white guy who he would have fought in prison for being a skin head. So there was nothing courageous about talking to Lynn. I don’t remember much about the conversations. They were trivial, usually. She wanted to learn the rules of baseball, so my brother and I would tell her everything.
Occasionally, she would ask a deep question and looking back I don’t know if it’s because she wanted to find the answers or if she wanted to prove that she was more than just pretty and happy and an A plus student. I would engage in the philosophical discussions, because I yearned for something more authentic than the phoniness of junior high pep rallies and dances and memorizing the quadratic equation.
Then she died. She took too many pills one night and the next day she wasn’t there. No one spoke about it on the bus. I asked innocently “Where’s Lynn?” and faced a deafening silence. The administrators explained to us during first hour that she had committed suicide, but they did so in a cold, professional way – just how you would expect, with no tears, no hugs, no depth to the conversation.
They used her death to explain why suicide is not the answer, afraid that somehow her suicide disease would become contagious and they'd have an epidemic on their hands. I became angry when it turned into an advertisement for school counselors. I’m sure they were doing their best, but I hated them for using death to sell something, even if that something was counseling.
I watched her friends, the preppy pack, I called them and their make-up was smeared and some of them cried so loud that you could almost miss the advertisement for counseling. I wanted so badly to walk over and give one of them a hug and weep with them, but I felt constrained by the hierarchy. To them, I was no better than the magic card kid.
I never attended the funeral. I felt a lot of shame in knowing someone who had committed suicide. In church, they regarded it as the ultimate sin (aside from buying grapes - it was, after all, the era of the second major Cesar Chavez grape boycott. I myself thought the greatest sin was being a Dodgers fan. I didn’t want to tell my parents, because I suspected that they would be disappointed that I had a friend who had committed suicide, or they would want to talk about it, or they would ask me, weeks later, if I was okay; and this would only lead to a Saturday Morning cartoon special kind of lecture.
I think the other reason I didn’t go is that I didn’t want to face the preppy pack, with their beautiful hair and their muscles and their nice clothes. I didn’t want them to think I was just there to get a half-day off from school.
During this time, I had been working tirelessly on a History Day project and I showed up to Mrs. S.’s room with a final draft of the script. She sensed that there was something wrong, so she looked into my eyes and said, “Are you okay?” and I just cried. I know that the rules say a teacher should never meet alone and should never give a hug, but that’s what she did. She gave me one of those camp-counselor-side-hugs and just let me cry for awhile as I explained how stressed I was and the pressure I felt and how lonely life was and how sad I was that Lynn had been there and then she was gone. She listened and offered no advice. Finally she prayed for me, right there on the spot.
I never realized the impact of that moment. Even now, when people ask me why I teach middle school (often with a tone of shock, as if to ask, “Why do you shovel manure for a living?”) I give rational answers. “They are just building convictions about life. Unlike elementary age, they can think well. But they aren’t apathetic, like high school. I like the energy level.”
It wasn’t until later, once I began to teach, that I realized the connection. I teach partly because I want to reach that preppy pack whom I couldn’t reach as a zit-faced geek. I want to befriend that magic card kid who is bullied daily. I want to be that teacher who is there in the right moment for one kid and who listens as that kid cries. I think, too, I still feel some of the guilt about Lynn, and part of why I teach is that it is an act of penance. I wish that my motive was more pure. I know it's not my job to be Superman, but I know it's a part of my story and a part of why I ended up here.