Stacey’s Cat

By Wayne Osborn

7:35AM

It’s early on a Friday morning, and I’m standing bleary-eyed in the gymnasium of the elementary school that I teach at. My ears were still ringing from the previous night’s St. Patrick’s festivities, and being surrounded by 250 screaming children who were excitedly watching their teacher’s perform mind-numbing karaoke was sending me on the fast track to a colossal headache.

I had an inkling that things were going to go sideways when Zack greeted me with the tearful news that Stacey’s cat had been ran over and killed the night before. 

“JoJo is dead, Mr. Osborn! Stacey’s cat, he got run over…he died!” Zack peered up at me through tear-stained eyes and I immediately realized the serious tone of his statement.  He was obviously quite upset.

“Is Stacey here today?”

“Yes, he’s here” Zack sobbed.

“Well…he must be pretty upset, huh?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Then we’ll talk about this in reading class, okay Zack?  We’ll try to cheer Stacey up.  I know he must be really sad.  I can tell you’re sad too.” 

“Okay, Mr. O.  See ya.”  Zack wandered away towards the area where they were dispensing the breakfast, which consisted of a “breakfast pizza” which looked particularly unappetizing, especially this morning. 

I teach a reading group for 90 minutes each morning; Zack and Stacey, besides being neighbors, are both in my reading class. I knew that there would be a discussion of JoJo’s untimely demise at some point that morning.  I naively thought it would be a five-minute conversation.  I was wrong.

8:20AM

The first sign of trouble was Stacey himself.  A slight, likeable third grader, he’s a very sensitive guy anyway.  Today, the tears were flowing fast and furious.  I had heard that he had already been to our counselor’s office that morning, but evidently that hadn’t been enough to stem the waves of raw emotion that were washing over him.  I was sitting at my computer, trying to type up the story test that I was going to have them take during class today.  Stacey walked up to me and I could tell he had been crying quite hard. 

“I heard about your cat, Stacey. I am so sorry.” I stood up and put my arm around him.  He related the story of how his neighbor had found his cat dead in the street last night, how it had been run over by a car. 

“He picked it up out of the street, and then put it in our yard and knocked on our door.  He…he told us that JoJo was dead” Stacey said through broken sobs.  We stood that way for about five minutes, Stacey telling me all about his poor cat, and me trying to reassure him that I knew how he must be feeling, and how sorry I was for his loss.  Meanwhile, the other reading students (mostly 3^rd and 4^th graders) were gathering around us in silence.  If you’ve ever spent any time around elementary school kids, you know that is quite unusual!  There were looks of care and concern on everyone’s face.  This was high drama at its finest.  I finally decided to have the students start the day by doing a word search that I had created earlier.  I had intended on having them do this at the end of the day, but now seemed like a better time.  Plus, I still needed to finish typing up my story test. 

To be continued…