I'd have been better off not knowing

Sometimes knowing the future just fucking sucks. When I taught at the middle school I could say in my own little bubble thinking when I said my final goodbye to my students at the end of year thinking that their life couldn't get any more dysfuctional that what I had already witnessed.

Enter reality check.........I hadn't been at the highshool more than a month when one of my favorite students from a couple of years ago shattered my illusion that all my former students went onto normal academic and personal life experiences.

I was grading some papers in my first hour when I handed back a test to one of my former students enrolled in that hour. His test was a complete disaster with half of the answers missing. That's when he whispered to me that he was "intoxicated" when he took the test.  That in itself was disturbing enough, then he asked to talk to me in private out in the hall.

That's when he says to me, "If I tell you something, do you promise not to say anything?" Believe me as a teacher those are the words you never want to hear......Why? Because nothing good is ever repeated to you when it is preceeded by those words. Either way it's always something disturbing, and you know you won't be able to keep that promise.

Needless you've got to press them to tell you........for their own good, for your sake as an advocate. So they tell you and your heart sinks. You then realize that the kid that you bantered with in class two years ago, that loved the classic rock groups you grew up with, that showed so much promise is now a hopeless drug addict who admittedly swallowed enough morphine pills that morning to kill a horse. Who admits he's never not high, because the last time he tried to stay clean for 24 full hours, he ended up cutting his wrists.

So you take a deep breath, tell him to go back to class, head to the principal's office and tell them the kid's high off his ass and head back to class knowing you've got to look him in the eye as he's hauled out of class and detained by the liasion officer. You tell yourself you did it for his own good, but a part of you dies now that you know what his future holds. Yeah seeing the future really fucking sucks sometimes.