Damn

Well, I was going to write an outrageously funny post about being pursued by the US Army, but it's going to have to wait. I found out earlier today that one of my former students was shot and killed by a cable installer in a road-rage incident. This story was on the news this evening:

http://www.nbc5i.com/news/3639508/detail.html

A couple (only a couple?!?) of things bother me about this: 1) this is my fourth year of high school teaching and my second dead student (Lorena Osorio, aged 21, was thrown from the I-75/I-635 freeway-overpass-exchange-concrete-leviathan known as the High-Five by her 30-year-old boyfriend); 2) I'm more upset at the fact that I don't feel more upset over Gustavo's death. I feel more like, "Gosh, that's just bad luck." I really want to work up some kind of Jesus-based, paradigm shifting, redneck-ass-whupping, gun-toting lather over this, but instead I just feel tired. I feel old.

Gustavo was an intelligent, thoughtful, well-mannered kid. He was not a banger. He was a very fast learner of English. He was going to be an upper-classman this year. He will be missed.