“I heard the words ‘Oh crap!’ We shockingly stared at the pregnancy test. ‘What do I do?!,’ I asked. ‘You have to tell your mom.’ My mom was a ‘no nonsense’ woman. Everyone knew she was NOT to be played with. I had to tell her in public. We showed up, unannounced, at her job.”
‘What are ya’ll doing here?’ She had a peculiar look on her face. ‘We have something to tell you.’ ‘If you’re pregnant or dropping out of school, you might as well leave now! GET OUT!’
‘Miss, I have your father’s autopsy results,’ the coroner said. ‘He felt absolutely nothing.’ I quickly asked, ‘It wasn’t an overdose?!’ ‘No drugs were detected, ma’am.’ I cried hysterically.’
“‘We can’t reach him,’ he said. My grandpa was at my dad’s apartment trying to get in. Police arrived. ‘Do we have permission to break in?’ The officer kicked the door down. ‘Dad!,’ my sister screamed. A police officer held our grandpa back. ‘Dana wake him up, get him up!’ All she could say was, ‘Grandpa, I am so sorry.'”
‘I’m sick of getting dinged for test scores when my students don’t have food at home, or clothes that fit. I’m so sick of it, that I’m leaving the field.’
“Teaching was tenable when I was a 22-year-old single renter. It no longer works when I have a family and a mortgage. I’m not looking to have a crazy affluent lifestyle over here. But the fact is, I can only afford to live in the neighborhood where I teach because I’m married.”
‘It’s May, the month where it all goes down the tubes. I’m here to give you permission to tell all the CRAP to take an actual hike. Hand them lunch money. There is food, and that’s enough.’
“You will mess up. You will forget it’s Dress Like a Lumberjack Day or you will forget your cherub needs a cold drink to enjoy during the ‘special movie reward.’ You are allowed to feel bad for 10 seconds. Then I require you to move on. Your kid is fine.”
‘Why are you wearing a T-shirt?,’ I asked when I picked her up. ‘I had to put something on because I need privacy.’ She started bawling.’
“‘Yeah, it will be nice out, you can wear a dress.’ It didn’t occur to me an adult would look at my 5-year-old child and think wearing a dress was inappropriate. She was told she needed to leave class and go to the nurse’s office. The nurse told her, ‘She needed to cover her body.'”
‘Oh, my goodness.’ I say out loud. ‘What mommy?’ I look down at my daughter. ‘Oh nothing,’ I say. The last thing I need is for my kindergartner to be afraid to go to school.’
“The hairs on my neck stood up for the first time. After picking my daughter up from school, I got a text message from my husband, a principal. ‘We’re in lockout,’ it said. It was unprecedented. Suddenly, it felt serious.”
‘I’m ok to keep repeating until I pass.’ This is my adopted brother. His mother died of lupus; his father has a new family now. He’d need to repeat 6th grade.’
“People question ‘why was he allowed to graduate with that kind of average?’ or ‘he is barely able to read and write, how did he pass?’ The thing is, he tried and kept trying. We never scolded him, never made him feel like he did not know anything. We never made him feel bad about himself.”
‘The rumor mill was going full swing. I was a 14-year-old girl anxious to yell my lungs out and spend as much time with the football players as possible.’
“I’m sure somewhere in my teenage heart I was thinking… game on. Then things went from bad to worse . I promptly did what any teenage girl would do… burst into inconsolable sobs by my locker in the hallway of our high school.”
‘Can you help me remember where we buried him?’ It was 25 degrees outside. I could see my breath in the frosted air. But I couldn’t find his headstone.’
“As I turned to head back to my car, accepting defeat, there it was. ‘Leland McCoy Marrero. January 30, 1990 – October 16, 2016. ‘ I glanced down at my watch. That exact day would have been Leland’s 29th birthday.”
‘I was trying to look cool in front of my friend. ‘I hate this car. It’s dumb.’ I vividly remember Billy gently running his left hand over the dashboard and softly saying, ‘I think it’s nice.’
“There was this kid in my class named Billy. His family must have struggled financially. I know he was often forgotten at school pickup. One day, we were bringing him home. We had this Chevrolet minivan. It was gold. It wasn’t fancy, or flashy. It had cloth seats and probably the bare minimum. It was just a minivan, but it worked.”