by Ann Brennan

Created on: May 05, 2009

We Should Have Cried

Glenn was a nice boy. Not the most popular boy in middle school but liked by everybody. Maybe he wasn't invited to hang out with the in table but it didn't matter because he could sit where ever he wanted. He was accepted by every crowd as a nice kid. He was a favorite of Mrs. Carter, our sixth grade teacher. Again, not because he was the brightest kid in the class but because he was one of the most pleasant. He didn't cause trouble and you could always count on him to go with the participate.

He was a teacher's kind of kid.
His parents were still together and he had a large extended family that all lived nearby. At least this is how I remember him. I remember him sitting beside me on the bus and talking about our classes and about the other kids and what they were all doing. I remember simply liking him. He was a nice boy.

Even today if I think of him I can conjure his face and it is always with a smile because that is how I remember him. I remember him as a nice, happy boy. But in the spring of our sixth grade year, I also remember my mother answering the phone and getting very quiet and then hanging up the phone and sitting beside me, asking me whether I knew a boy named Glenn. She was never one to listen to the stories from school so she had no idea who my friends were really. I answered her even though part of me felt like I shouldn't. If I didn't answer I didn't have to hear what she would say next. I don't know how it was that I knew what she would say next but I did. Glenn was dead. He had been riding his bicycle down the road and was struck and killed by a young driver.

Over the next few days, we cried. Not just me. We all cried.
My friends, our teachers, our bus driver who drove to school that first day back after only picking up one stop.
Everybody cried. My mother decided a funeral was no place for a sixth grade girl so I didn't go but afterwards I was told that the church was filled. So many of the students and teachers and friends and family were there that many people had to stand at the back of the church. Glenn was a nice boy so we cried.

The following year we lost another classmate. Lee may have been a nice boy. I don't know. I look back now and remember that Lee had no friends. I don't remember what he did at lunch or in class or when we went on field trips but I know that he was always alone. The students didn't like him and we all knew that the teachers didn't like him.
He wasn't a trouble maker but he wasn't a "good boy"

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