Where Are My Teeth?

About that flowerbed

Sometime in the spring of my second junior year in college, I was wandering Branford's main courtyard when a small plaque set in the ground caught my eye. It was the typical notice that something -- the plantings in that bed -- had been donated to the college in memory of...

And then the world changed for me in a small way, because I recognized the name. When I was midway through elementary school, there was a hush one morning because a girl had died suddenly the night before. She'd had an asthma attack and been rushed to the hospital, but not in time. And the plaque I was looking at was her memorial. It was a weird feeling, realizing that I was one of the few people who would ever take a look at that inscription and know what it actually meant.

(Just for the record, the asthmatic boy in my own class in elementary school -- a scrawny kid who would offer to pick his scabs and let you watch him bleed -- grew up to be hale, fit and six feet tall. The asthmatic girl in my class in college went on to row in the olympics.)

So why is that more than 20 years later we still get idiocy like this where school officials would apparently rather see a student die than be helped by a friend who has every reason to know what he's doing?

Posted by wallich at October 10, 2003 10:13 AM