The Quiet Kid …
Nobody talks about what happens when the kid everyone ignores finally gets noticed.
Have you ever wondered what kind of pain it takes to turn an invisible teenager into someone willing to kill?
So I wrote a thriller about it.
These are two statements/questions I had in mind when I wrote my book, Fan Mail. I used characters from my fictional family of seven adopted brothers and my trio of cops. The story takes place in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where all or most of my stories take place. Real city, real school (Waukesha North High School) where I taught and coached for five years before I put away my coach’s whistle (I never actually used a whistle) and put my psychology lessons in a box as a just in case, and moved on to being a counselor at a smaller school south and east of Waukesha for one year before moving to California to do the same.
Let me tell you how I arrived at these two statements/questions …
I was a teacher, coach, counselor, and administrator for forty-nine years, semi-retiring in 2020. I still substitute for counselors and administrators, but mostly I stay home now and write. I take care of preparing meals and I clean the house (probably not to Kim’s liking, I’m sure). There are joyful days when I get to babysit for one or both of our grandchildren, Mason and Olivia. It is the best life.
In those forty-nine years, I’ve seen it all, or mostly all, and I’ve experienced firsthand isolation, meanness, and death. Death of kids, staff, and teachers. I watched helplessly as a few kids fell between the cracks. Perhaps more than a few.
My last year of teaching, I had a student in my psychology class. I’ll name him Tim. Tim sat in the back row on the left side of the room. Unless it was a paired or group activity, he didn’t interact with anyone. He sat, listened, and took notes. Tim never missed an assignment. I just took him to be a shy, quiet, and reserved young man who didn’t have any friends in that class.
He graduated in May of that year. After the ceremony, after any party that might have taken place, after his family was in bed, Tim put on his graduation gown, took his father’s rifle, and shot himself. Tim had sat by himself in the family room of his house for the last time.
A quiet kid who, by everyone’s account, was a good kid. Responsible, quiet, or reserved. A kid who had walked the hallways of the school with about 1,200 other students. A young man who had eaten in the cafeteria with the other kids. But on the night he graduated, he came home and killed himself.
To this day, I can picture him. I still hear his voice answering one of my questions. There was absolutely no indication that he was in pain. Tim was just an ordinary, average kid. A nice kid with a friendly smile, even.
By that time, I had a counseling degree and a psychology background. I taught psychology, and my goal for each of my students in the psychology classes I taught was to help them understand themselves a little better. That was what the culminating project was all about. And to this day, there was nothing in his project that gave me any clue how he felt. I thought I knew kids. Hell, I believe I know kids. But tragically, I didn’t know Tim, which makes me believe I don’t know kids at all.
Most of us were alive when the tragedy at Columbine High School took place. Thirteen students and one teacher were killed by two students, Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18.
I remember the horror of it. Since then, there have been oh so many other shootings and deaths of children in schools across the country. Ugly, horrifying, grotesque, and above all, needless.
As a counselor, I must have seen and spoken with hundreds of kids in my office, or walked the hallways, or sat in the cafeteria, in the gym, or practice fields. I learned from them more than they learned from me. I remember some of the more memorable ones. The heartbreak, the pain, the lack of understanding of “why” something did or didn’t happen. Many, I’m still connected with over social media – the happier ones. Some have families of their own now. Some are working at their first adult job now. From the sound of their posts, texts, and phone calls, they seem happy and productive. But then again, I thought I knew Tim, too.
As a principal, I had several students die tragically in a traffic accident, and we held the celebration of life in the packed school gym. In the day or two after the accident, before that ceremony, I sat on the floor talking to a girl who was a good friend of the two girls. I said little, mostly listened, and to this day I wonder if I had said enough, had done enough. I had another student at my most recent school pass away from an aggressive brain tumor. We rushed his commencement ceremony so that he and his parents could tell everyone that he had graduated. It was a beautiful ceremony, tearful and sad, but at the same time, we were pleased we could do this for him and for his family. It was one of the toughest days as a principal I ever had.
I still think of those kids. The faces I still recall without remembering some of their names. The tall kid who wore the trench coat, whose father battled but succumbed to cancer. The kids battling addiction and the worried parents, and of course, some parents who didn’t know their kids had any addiction. The kid who was out of control and had to be wrestled to the kid and held safely by one of my assistant principals. The two kids who were shot at lunch on the grounds by a kid returning books to the library. The girl who had her face sliced out of jealously by another girl. And as I sit here and write this, I wonder why? And how? Mostly, I wonder if I could have helped before it took place.
And after all those years, or perhaps throughout all those years, I came up with two questions or statements about quiet kids and tough choices, and kids falling between the cracks. Kids who walk the hallways and sit in classrooms and who go unnoticed. Who might have walked past me, hoping someone like me would reach out and talk to them. I have many questions and not a lot of answers, but I centered my book, Fan Mail, on these two:
Nobody talks about what happens when the kid everyone ignores finally gets noticed.
Have you ever wondered what kind of pain it takes to turn an invisible teenager into someone willing to kill?
Fan Mail was born from those questions/comments/statements. It became a Maxy Award Finalist, a Literary Titan Gold Book Award Winner, and a Reader’s Favorite Award Winner.
In Fan Mail, there is a boy of sixteen suffering from pain from all he has been through. Despite the neglect and dislike he feels first from his biological parents and then his adopted father, Brian will do anything he can to protect his family, especially his brothers. Brian blames himself for causing so much stress that his father suffered a heart attack. And despite having had a verbal altercation with one of his adopted brothers, Brian enters a room at school knowing that another student has a gun and is willing to use it. Brian pays a price for his willingness to save two of his brothers and a friend.
The question of what kind of pain it takes to turn an invisible teenager into someone willing to kill was at the forefront each time I sat down to write Fan Mail. The fact is, we do not know the pain kids feel or how much pain it takes for someone to pull a trigger aimed at another student. As a counselor and principal, I was very much aware of staff members and teachers who carry baggage with them each time they enter a classroom and who suffer pain each day they come to school to teach or to do other educationally related tasks.
We are human beings. We feel pain and we suffer. Hopefully, we feel joy and love, and acceptance more than pain and isolation. That is the core of Fan Mail. That is the truth in and among the pages I wrote. If there is a moral between the covers of my book, it is that we must sometimes put others ahead of ourselves. That we must consider that others suffer, to a greater or lesser extent, and suffer as much as we do.
Bottom line: with some sort of post graduate degree or not, we don’t know what others are experiencing or feeling, or thinking about day to day as we rub elbows with them. So we have to take care not only of ourselves, but each other- students, kids, staff, and teachers. And maybe even an administrator. Something to think about …
Live Your Life, and Make A Difference!
If you are interested, the link to Fan Mail is https://tinyurl.com/37xyxe3r It is available in Audible, Kindle/ebook, and Paperback.
Here is an exciting message from my publisher, Black Rose Writing:
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Lastly, I am nearing the end of my newest book, The Disappeared. It features Brian, George, and three cops who inhabit the pages of all my books. I submitted a partial to Black Rose Writing and as I wait for their response, I happily continue to write to completion. I hope to have good news for you in a later post.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please use the comment section below. As always, thank you for following along on my writing journey. Until next time …
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