Because he killed his mother last night

“Do you have a student named Tommy Sarbanes?” Sil asked yelling over the transom above the bathroom door. I was in the shower and when I finally stopped serenading myself I answered in the affirmative. “Yes, I believe I have him in detention.” To which Sil deadpanned: “I don’t think he will be in class today.” Now Tommy, an 8th grader, was rather big for his age so I thought perhaps Sil saw him the previous night passing for 21 and drinking at some bar. I was shocked when Sil continued: “Because he killed his mom last night.”

It turned out Sil had just heard the breaking news bulletin on the radio about a Columbia school boy who had killed his mother the night before. Tommy’s father had died just a month prior and the authorities eventually deduced that Tommy had poisoned him prior to blowing his mom’s brains out at point blank range with a shotgun. Obviously, Tommy had a little more problems than my typical student but I did teach an alternative classroom and a couple of my other students didn’t make it to 25 and I had my distributor caps removed from my car when I was visiting one set of parents and one time had a parent teacher conference with a parent who brought a baseball bat to the meeting and we weren’t discussing the National Pastime. It was a rough bunch.