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By Darren Johnson
Campus News
I recently realized, a good trick to falling asleep at night – amidst all the anxiety in our waking lives – is to ask myself trivia questions: Name at least seven US states that end with a vowel (“Y” doesn’t count); name at least 10 world leaders (this question was a lot easier to answer pre-Internet, before my brain became saturated with clickbait quizzes); name a dozen American authors from the 1800s; name five countries that begin with the letter “K” (this one is really hard). You get the idea.
By the time I get to the fourth or fifth answer, I’m fast asleep. Sometimes I will wake up in a sweat at 2 a.m. and blurt out “Kazakhstan!”
But recently I came up with a question that isn’t quite trivia, not to me, and it kept me up later than expected: What happened to the best and worst students in my school?
When I create such sleepy-time questions, I usually set up some parameters. For this question, I had to pick a school. Grade school? High school? College? Grad school?
I decided to go with grade school. Strangely, every school I attended has gone out of business in some way. The grade school still is there, but has a different name now. It is a Catholic school, and many of the students were high-powered. It also was a close-knit place, and we were constantly ranked, punished and/or rewarded, so, for my sleepy-time purposes, this question would be the easiest to answer. Or so I thought.
The smartest kid
The smartest kid from that school, which had about eight or nine really smart kids per grade, was a boy (let’s call him William). We regularly were tested, and he’d always score in the top percentile on these tests. He was an overall good person – tall and broad shouldered, so he wasn’t prey for bullies – and he’d often calmly defuse others’ arguments on the playground.
I remember he came from a house in the country, without a father, and his brother was ill. He had a hardworking mother and a grandfather who he adored and who played a positive role in his life. William always had kind things to say, and a big heart. He’d invite me to his parties, even though most kids didn’t think I was cool enough to have over, and, one time, I picked up one of his heavy dumbbells over my head and he seemed genuinely impressed. I wasn’t used to positive feedback, so took some pleasure in that.
The least academic kid
I won’t call him the dumbest kid. Surely he wasn’t. But he definitely got the worst grades in the class. Let’s call him Peter.
One time, I got a rare detention because I didn’t turn in some cartoons I’d drawn for an assignment because I didn’t like my work. Peter was always in detention, and he was made to do some homework he, again, hadn’t turned in. On the sheet were multiple-choice questions. He laughed, with big yellow teeth, and randomly circled letters, finishing the assignment in 15 seconds. He thought I was a sucker for actually doing my assignment slowly, with care.
Another time, I went over to his house. He lived in the projects (the Catholic school gave out some need-based scholarships). He told me his father was in prison for shooting a nurse. His grandfather was known to watch pornography on TV with the kids around. His mother looked frazzled. She had yellowed clippings taped to the faux wood paneled walls, all about the death of Elvis Presley. There was snow on the ground, and we used a former Formica tabletop as a sled to go down a nearby hill. My parents forbade me from going there again, after learning the details of my visit.
So what happened?
I mostly lost touch with both William and Peter after eighth-grade graduation. I went to a different high school than both; occasionally I’d see William when my team would play football against his. I saw Peter only once more; I was 14 and doing my paper route and he was goofing around with some idiots; though he seemed glad to see me, flashing that wide smile with his big yellow teeth.
William, because of his size and work ethic, eventually went on to play college football. His academic specialty was military history, so he signed on as an Army officer to get real-world experience before returning to academia for his doctorate. Unfortunately, though, he quickly died in Iraq, when his tank went over a mine, and was deceased in his early 30s, leaving behind a wife and child. His online obituary is followed by many comments attesting to his goodness.
Peter made it to about 40, after a life of substance abuse and maybe a minor jail stint – it’s hard to get the exact details – and that life likely wore him down, and he died prematurely of a stroke, also leaving behind a child. Posts on his obituary page show he was well-liked.
One followed the rules; one didn’t.
So what eventually happened to the “best” and “worst” students from my former grade school? Essentially, the same thing.
And that’s the last word…for now.
Darren Johnson ranks himself as maybe the eighth brightest student from his 8th grade class. Reach him at darren@cccn.us.
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