The Three Things It Took Me Years to Realize that I Learned From My Little Brother’s Death

First off, apologies for another late Wednesday post; the personal gravity of my topic this week has caused me to spend a lot more time planning, editing, and revising (PDREPing, as it were). This post is something that I feel inclined to share, especially given the emotions and feelings that I know many of my friends are currently experiencing. There is also the fact that yesterday my little brother, Alex, would have turned 27. It’s been just over eleven years since he died in February of my senior year of high school. Being a stereotypical man who invented the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn, I bottled up a lot of the things I was experiencing at that point, so I am still processing them to this day. I attempted to throw this stuff in a list, but so many of the feelings and ideas are intertwined that it became complicated to differentiate the points. So I guess you should hold onto your butts, because here we go…

I promise there will be no Velociraptors…this time.

1. No Matter Your Age, Death Ages You Further

I was seventeen years old when my brother died in a car accident. I can tell you almost all the details about that day from the CD I was listening to in the car (Powerman 5000…leave me alone, I was in high school) to how long I was in class before being pulled out (less than fifteen minutes) to the way my little brother looked in the hospital. I wasn’t allowed to see him until after my parents arrived at the hospital, despite the fact that I got there almost an hour before them. I still remember what I was told by my father and a coach that I respected greatly: this has made you a man.

It sounds melodramatic, but was more than a bit true. I forced myself into a stoic portrait of all the manliest men that I had seen in movies and on TV. You know the scene in which a man turns from a situation and the camera catches a single tear fall from his eye? That is what 17 year old me thought I was doing. That also meant reading a eulogy at my brother’s funeral, acting like I was not destroyed by the situation, and bottling away all shows of emotion that I could possibly hide. It wasn’t until I arrived at college that I realized how much I really had been changed by the situation. I certainly don’t claim that I was the model of maturity throughout my college years, but I felt as though I carried an extra weight throughout those years. My ability to compartmentalize the situation helped me, but not everyone is me…

You’re Not Crazy for Talking to Yourself, You’re Crazy for Answering

In an episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the main characters (Marshall) finds a letter that he wrote to his adult self when he was fifteen. When I recently caught a re-run of this episode, it made me wonder what teenage Benn would say to adult Benn. But, since I am such a one upper, I imagined a conversation with ten year old Benn AND sixteen year old Benn. That’s way harder to picture than just one other person!

Adult Benn: Oh hey guys, good to see you!

16 Year Old Benn: Dude…you got fat.

10 Year Old Benn: Yeah!

Adult: I mean yeah, I’m bigger than you guys, but it isn’t that bad. I’m dropping extra weight now since practices start soon.

10 Year Old Benn: FOR YOUR HOCKEY TEAM???

Adult: Ummm…no. I never ended up learning to ice skate well enough to play hockey.

10 Year Old Benn: oh.

16 Year Old Benn: Are you playing football still at least??

Adult: Uh….not really. I stopped playing football when I graduated high school. I actually play rugby now!

16 Year Old Benn: That’s gay.

Adult: Do you even know what rugby is?

16 Year Old Benn: Yea man. It’s gay.

Adult: Right…so anyway…

16 Year Old Benn: Where are your sleeve tattoos? Shouldn’t you have flames around your wrists?

10 Year Old Benn: AND A HUGE DRAGON ON YOUR BACK!!!

Adult: Yeah guys I actually grew out of both of those ideas. I have tattoos, but I kept them where I could hide them under a t-shirt. Ya know, for jobs.

16 Year Old Benn: Sell out.

10 Year Old Benn: OH!! Are you a professional wrestler now? Do you make lots of money?

16 Year Old Benn: Dude, wrestling is dumb. Loser.

Adult: Yeah…no I’m definitely not a wrestler. I stopped watching wrestling when I was like 14.

16 Year Old Benn: Yeah, seriously. Besides you were always going to be a mechanic. No way you went to extra school after high school was over!

Adult: Um…I kinda went to college. For a while.

16 Year Old Benn: Dude seriously? For how long? You quit, right?

Adult: Well no. I graduated. And then I went back to get my master’s degree.

16 Year Old Benn: Wow. Tool.

10 Year Old Benn: YOU’RE A MASTER??? SO PEOPLE CALL YOU MASTER???

Adult: …people don’t really do that after you get a master’s degree…

16 Year Old Benn: You’re a master of being gay.

Adult: Seriously man? Is that the only word you know? Wait! I know you know more words! Stop using that one!

16 Year Old Benn: Heh heh…gay.

Adult: COME ON MAN!

10 Year Old Benn: Well what do you do? Are you an archaeologist? Do you get to dig up awesome dinosaur bones??

Adult: Sigh. I wish man. Don’t worry, no matter how old you get, dinosaurs stay awesome.

16 Year Old Benn: Are you like a business man? You’re your own boss right???

Adult: Actually I ended up becoming a teacher! Who would have guessed, right?

10 Year Old Benn: Boo!

16 Year Old Benn: Seriously? Ok, ok, are you at least teaching science or something cool?

Adult: I don’t teach science…

16 Year Old Benn: Business classes?

Adult: Actua –

10 Year Old Benn: P.E.!!!!!!

Adult: No, I –

10 Year Old Benn: RECESS!!!!

Adult: Dude no! Calm down! I teach…English.

10 and 16 year old Benn: ENGLISH?????

Adult: Yeah I know you hate it guys. It gets way better in college. Besides you both like to read.

10 Year Old Benn: Yeah I do!

16 Year Old Benn: No I don’t!

Adult: Don’t worry guys, you’ll enjoy it when you get here.

16 Year Old Benn: Ok…maybe we can still save this. Do you teach at like some cool school where you don’t have to get up until noon?

Adult: …I was up at 4:30 today.

16 Year Old Benn: You’re dead to me.

Adult: Do you realize the irony of that statement.

16 Year Old Benn: …gay.

10 Year Old Benn: Can we get ice cream?

So, in summary, 10 year old Benn was a ball of energy with ridiculous goals and no ability to focus on anything for more than five seconds. 16 year old Benn hates everything because it is all gay. Adult Benn hopes that his kids aren’t as big of jerks as he was. Who cares what a couple of punk kids think of me anyway?

What Has Me Burning Now

One word: accountability. Without some sense of consequences, the kids we teach and raise never adjust to the real world. There are lots of reasons to make excuses, but at what point are we just hamstringing the kids, permanently crippling the maturation process? I will readily admit that I almost didn’t graduate high school. I was lazy and unmotivated until I had a real reason to do work. I hated homework (sweet sweet irony), but always did well on tests and quizzes, so I usually pulled high C’s or low B’s. And then I almost found a way to fail my 12^th grade English class (yeah, the plot thickens). Mr. Tlumack was my English teacher and definitely one of the best teachers I have ever had. He did not baby me, he did not give me a packet of make up work; instead, he told me that I would fail if I didn’t do the work. He took a few minutes and explained to me why I was failing and what it meant for my future, especially considering that I had already been accepted to CNU. As I look around, I see the same conversation occurring with many of my co-workers with students (along with hearing about it at other schools). However, it doesn’t seem to be sticking the same way with these kids like it stuck with me. I feel like it has been a collaborative effort to ruin our kids, aided by the “participant trophy” generation, in which everyone has to be equal and everyone is a winner, and steadily relaxing standards (despite “standardized testing”). In the real world you do not get extensions on due dates, you do not get make up opportunities, and you do not get “participant trophies” when you lose a job to a better candidate. But luckily, we have standardized testing to tell us who is and is not good enough. Too bad our kids aren’t standardized, huh?