I always hate it when people want sympathy because someone they vaguely know suffered a tragedy.  So this isn't a cry for sympathy; I'm just relating a very sad event and a very strange day.

Last night, an Eastside 9th grader named Freddie Logan was practicing with the basketball team when he abruptly passed out.  One of the coaches tried to perform CPR, but Freddie died before he could do anything.  Freddie had a bad heart and was asthmatic, so people who knew him weren't incredulous that this happened. 

It was still a shock to everyone at Eastside.  The principal brought in counselors, nurses, and reverends from around the community to help the students.  I thought that was overkill, but I'd changed my opinion by the end of the day.  Yes, as expected, a decent amount of the students used the tragedy as an excuse to skip class and cop out of their assignments.  But even more of them were geniunely shaken by Freddie's death.

I'm not used to such communal mourning.  Katie says it's an African-American thing, which would be further proof that as much as I'm mastering classroom psychology, I know absolutely nothing about these kids underneath their nice, wannabe-gangsta surfaces.

Everybody was talking about it.  They'd spend hours in the library, making tributes to Freddie and having people write remembrances.  The administration circulated xeroxed copies of Freddie's picture, and pretty soon, everyone had one taped to their back, or front, or bookbag.  They wrote his name on the board, and philosophized about death the entire day.

I didn't know Freddie existed until he passed away.  Like on September 11th, it was hard for me to get choked up over someone I didn't know, although I was shaken seeing my students cry.  I know them.  I don't want them to hurt.

I tried asking about Freddie's personality.  Was he nice?  Nearly everyone paused before answering that.  "He was always smiling," they'd say.  Gradually, I pieced together a picture of a wannabe delinquent who smoked weed, got into too many fights, had multiple girlfriends at a time, and wasn't always nice to his mama.  Also someone who was never in a bad mood, always lent money to a friend, and inspired hundreds of people to seemingly be proud that they knew him.  A regular kid. 

As a teacher, I wondered what he'd have been like in class, and I decided: I probably would have hounded him endlessly to do his work, but he also would have been one of those good-natured, always-participating students who end up being my favorite.  I can't really know that, but it's my guess.

While I was walking home from the gym tonight, I started thinking about this boy I didn't know.  Maybe it's possible to be sad over a stranger.  Maybe it doesn't matter whether he was nice all the time, or just to a few people who were touched by his friendliness.  It's just a horrible tragedy when somebody doesn't live to see his sixteenth birthday.  I started getting really shaken by that thought, and then a really freaky thing happened.  I looked up, and the first thing I saw was his picture, on someone's TV as I walked by their apartment.  It shook me, enough to write this entry when I don't even have a personal connection to Freddie.

I guess it doesn't matter what he was like.  It's just a damn shame that he isn't alive today.