Tear-fest

My seventh period class has been one big weepy-eyed mess lately, and I'm not sure why. A couple of the girls are repeat offenders, always tangled in romantic webs and questioning friendships: standard middle school drama. Still, they're not the type of girls to cry for attention or even ask to leave the room. They'll quietly choke back tears, red-eyed, until they can get it together again. It makes me sad.

One girl has genuine cause for grief. She didn't have to say anything, but I know that her father died (wrongly) two years ago on Thanksgiving. I know because her sister was a student of mine when it happened. Since we returned from the break, she's been quiet, sedate, breaking into tears when I called on her to read aloud. I peeked in her writer's notebook and read that she wants to curse God.

Today it was me who got misty-eyed, when I playfully assigned the journal topic: "How should Ms. D------ spend her Christmas bonus money?" expecting answers like "buy me a playstation" or "put a stereo system in your car" (thanks, Lorenzo) and instead got this eerily appropriate response from Cindy:

Ms. D------ should spend her Christmas somewhere out of town so she can get away from everything. She should go out of town to get out of doing work and checking papers for the holiday. Ms. D, you should get relaxed, go visit some of your cousins or parents or your brother and sisters on Christmas Eve. I'm pretty sure that they miss you because you were gone for a long time. You should be around the people that love you over the holiday. You should really try and get away from everything. I say that you should try and go visit your family on Christmas Eve, I know that is what I'm going to do every year.

If there's a nicer, kinder, more deserving group of kids out there, I haven't met them yet; and I'm very happy to be going to Phoenix.