one boy and his world

While writing an email this evening, I realized that part of my day needed to get out, in a sense . . . that I’ve been saddened by a discovery. I should have realized this earlier, I suppose, when I thought about it during the last class of the day and found myself fighting tears. It could have helped that we were watching a DVD about Tsunami’s at the time, mind you—tears are of course odd things sometimes, cropping up when you least expect them, but telling more by doing so than any “expected” tears could ever tell . . .
So anyhow, as I began to say, school involved a rather rough realization . . . the kids I was subbing for started talking about the latest news:
A large chunk of the students are on the ski trip right now, along with several of the teachers. It seems that last night a teacher found drugs on one of the kids—a discovery that his classmates were not at all surprised by. They all knew that when he was roaming yesterday afternoon [and he popped in to the library as well, leaving with a disconcerted shake of his head when I asked if he needed me], he was nervously looking for his dealer to arrive.
How disheartening--I really liked the kid, for all his oddities. He is a sweet boy, and eager to please, eager to be helpful when asked. And it's so sad that I suppose that as a school we'll have to lose him now, to a world that is, I fear, not so kind to teenage boys . . .