In the hot, stuffy gymnasium of Farmington High School, I could feel the hundreds of sweaty people pressing in around me, breathing in the same thickened humid air that I was forced to breathe. This small gym was usually occupied by physical education classes and the occasional class skippers who would much rather shoot hoops than read The Epic of Gilgamesh. Today, however, the gym was transformed. Two hundred folding chairs faced the front of the gym and the bleachers, usually tucked away to allow for extra space in the physical education classes, were pulled out to their full capacity. Even with the five hundred additional seats provided by the bleachers, and even with the two hundred seats the folding chairs provided, many people were left standing in the rear of the gym or huddled together on the floor. After all, this day was a magical day, a day of transformation. This day, June 16th, the class of 2007 was about to leave our halls and stumble out of the building to be blinded by the sun-light and become people of the world. I shifted in my seat, anxious for the ceremony to begin. Just then, the dreaded music began and the slow, melancholy march commenced. In one massive movement, everyone in the gym quickly came to their feet to watch the seniors, clad in the color of mourning, as they sauntered, sometimes out of step, down the main aisle. I watched anxiously as my friends, my class-mates, and my high-school family walked past me; next year, it would be me in their place. Someone said a prayer over the graduating class, the speakers said their words of encouragement, and our principle handed out the diplomas. A loud cheer erupted from both the new graduates and those in the crowd. In the eighteen or so short years of each of his or her lives, this was the biggest event thus far. I could not wait for this day of celebration, this day of sheer elation to be mine.


JT LaMantia, a recent graduate of Farmington High School, class of 2007 had plans to celebrate his graduation, like most teens usually do. He made appearances at several parties over the weekend of graduation, but June 19th was his day. That Tuesday was the day he celebrated his liberation from that cruel institution of learning. In Farmington’s bordering town of Middleton, JT, his close friends and his girlfriend, Maddie, made plans to stay at a friend’s cabin. Waterfront property on Sunrise Lake, toys for the water, access to the island in the middle of the lake, all at their disposal. As a recent graduate, JT had not a care in the world; everything had panned out perfectly in his life. Oh, yes, he had plans for college, but that was months away. Life seems to go on forever, stretching on eternally in front of us all; why worry about the end so soon? Celebrate the now in life. That was how JT lived. He and his friends went out on the lake that day in those spirits.


JT was a great guy. JT was a typical guy. He was mischievous but genuinely good. He, unlike me, was the person that everyone knew. While I hid behind my books and small group of friends, he was the outgoing guy who had a friend in almost everyone in the school. He always had a quirky smirk on his face. Unlike me, he was very involved in sports; I kept to theatre and chorus. JT played a few years of football and was an amazing basketball player; he played with such passion. Two loves were present in JT’s life, one being basketball, the other being Maddie. Not once did I ever hear anything negative about him, but that isn’t to say I didn’t hear about him. I would hear about him in the halls: how he scored the most points at last night’s game against our rival school, how he planned on taking Maddie to prom in a stretch limo, and once I heard about how he defended a mentally handicapped kid who was being bullied. I often passed him in the halls of Farmington High School. In a school of five hundred, it was hard not to pass someone at least twenty times, know someone’s name, or know his or her business. I doubt he ever heard about my business; unlike him I did not really have any to spread.


June 23rd, 2007, a day I can never forget. Nor will I. Some events in life are the ones we try to forget, but they seem to be engrained permanently in our minds, forever haunting us. We tell ourselves that we ought to forget them. Sometimes it is things that are important to us for some reason unknown to us. Sometimes it is a life altering event. This event was a life altering event for me. I do not even know if it should be. I do not know if it is greedy to claim this event that was not mine as an event that changed my perspective of life. I do not know why, but this day, June 23rd, stays fresh in my mind, constantly replaying in bits and pieces over and over again. Some pieces are void and I have forgotten the exact words that were spoken, but I cannot forget how I felt. Maybe, the reason why I can’t forget is because JT taught me the most important lesson in my life, and I barely knew him.


In the bright light of the early morning sun, I glanced in the mirror to scrutinize my attire for the day. My black heels clicked on the linoleum of the bathroom floor as I backed away from the mirror; I dressed my part perfectly. I never planned on this. I never wanted this. I never expected this. Just at that moment, my mother alerted me to my chauffeur’s presence. Riley, my comrade from the fire department, hugged me quickly, always there when I need him most.


We drove in silence to the Emmanuel Advent Church in our bordering city, Rochester, and pulled into the already packed parking-lot. Walking quickly, we made our way into the church building and found ourselves blending into the sea of black people, all crushed into this small, florally fragrant, room. Never had I seen such a melancholy lot. In the middle of this moving sea of black, there stood a tripod. No one looked directly at it, although I could catch some people looking at it, and then quickly looking away. I walked up to it, stood right in front of it, and gazed at it for a long moment. It was a beautiful collage. Snap-shots of JT’s life decorated the poster board. In the very middle of the collage was the picture taken right after he received his diploma, exactly one week ago. He was grinning in his black cap and gown, his orange flower standing out brashly against the black, his grin piercing. Beside the collage was a table topped with a bouquet of white lilies and a book with various signatures and messages. In these messages were praises of JT’s ambitions, written memories, loving thoughts, and numerously written was the phrase, “Only the good die young.”


I pressed past the ghost in the pictures, past the overly fragrant lilies and into the sanctuary. The air is hot and stuffy. The air is suffocating me, pressing in from all directions, thick and moist, smelling of yet even more lilies, women’s perfume and rank from the odor of hundred of fresh tears. The air carried the sounds of muffled sobs, sniffling, and the air carried the weight of a silence that coincided with the small sounds of grief. I felt oddly claustrophobic in the vast room. I pushed forward through those clamoring around the doorway and I calmly walked to the far back corner of the room which gave me an excellent view of those in the room. I observed the women who grasped and fiddled with their tissues, their faces a faint hue of red. I observed the men who leaned far over, their backs bowed over, head in their hands, trying to make it inconspicuous that they were crying. I observed my fellow class-mates, hugging one another, openly crying into one another’s shoulders, patting backs, stroking hair, comforting each other.
One class-mate I directly observed was previously a great friend to me, almost a brother. He was on the football team with JT and was friends with him as well. Sitting next to his mother in the pew, Chris Greeley leaned on her for support. She patted his light brown, extremely curly hair. I had never seen him so taken by grief before. Like the stereotypical football playing teen-aged boy, he would usually take grief and shake it off, but this time, grief shook him. His cousin, Scotty DePalma sat a few pews over with some family members. I distinctly recall seeing him cry openly. He, too, was on the football team with JT. However, the person who consumed my observation the most was Big Mikey Lemlin. He was one of JT’s good friends. He was the tough guy who was the biggest teddy-bear at the same time. Today, though, there was no tough guy present, purely the boy who was completely affected by the loss of a great friend. I caught only one glimpse of Maddie. She was not crying, but when I looked into her eyes, I knew she was not crying only because she had run out of tears. This event was so surreal to her. She was there at her boyfriend’s final hour. No seventeen year old girl, at the prime of her love-filled relationship, should be able to say that.


The words that were spoken were moving. The words that were spoken were filled with emotion and love and sincere grief. The words are nothing without the emotion. The Chaplain of the Fire Department, a religious man, and father of one of JT’s good friends, spoke. His words did not speak to me; what spoke to me was his anguish over the young man being laid to rest. JT’s aunt spoke over the charity and community spirit. She spoke of how our community bonded together in the time of tragedy. JT’s best friend spoke of the times they shared and the full life JT was able to live in his few short years. He regretted nothing in life because he lived his life to the fullest extent he could. The words of an unfamiliar hymn projected onto the spacious wall of the sanctuary and we sang to the memory of JT LaMantia. The words filled the audience with such remorse that many could not finish singing the hymn. There was no silence when the music ended. The room was filled with wails, sobs and nose blowing.


I wasn’t prepared for the intense emotion that followed. In the front of the room a few men stood up. They stepped past the floral displays and stood at either end of JT’s closed casket. I remember thinking how ironic it was that caskets were made to be so ornate and beautiful at this time of ugly emotion and hateful remorse. Those professional men picked up the casket and began the melancholy march down the center aisle. Big Mikey stood up, reverently, respecting his friend, and in one massive movement, the rest followed suit to watch JT’s final march. Of his short nineteen years on this earth, this was the most significant event, the end of his life. The sorrow in that room was palpable; I could feel it stinging my skin. I could feel the remorse in the tears gushing down my cheeks. It was tangible. I could reach my hand out and grasp at it in the air if I so desired and hold it there, in my hand. So, this was death; this is what death felt like to those who lived.


On June 19th, I heard my father’s fire scanner alert EMT and Fire responders of an incoming medical call. All my life I have heard these ridiculous scanners prattle off calls; I barely pay attention to them at all these days. For some strange reason, I heard this one. “Strafford to all Farmington Fire and EMS responders: please respond mutual-aid to Middleton, Sunrise Lake, for a nineteen year old male, not conscious, not breathing, was involved in a ski-doo accident.” ‘Middleton,’ I thought, ‘that is my neighboring town.’ I stared at the scanner as if it would say, “Cancel Farmington, call is ACTUALLY in Milton.” I don’t know anyone in Milton. Let this happen to someone else’s town. ‘Middleton,’ I thought, ‘kids from Middleton attend school in Farmington.’ Through that scanner, I heard the responders rush to the fire station, their frantic voices declaring their acknowledgement to the emergency. I heard the ambulance sign on marking its departure from downtown Farmington, a solid fifteen minutes away from Sunrise Lake at regular speed. I heard the ambulance as it wailed past my road, and following it the sirens of the engine truck. After that, silence.


Silence spans on for infinity. Thirty seconds seems like hours. Those five minutes lasted an eternity. I left my body behind, imagining who it could be. Maybe it was someone from a different state. Out-of-staters always get into SOME kind of trouble in New Hampshire. Maybe I misheard the age. Maybe the dispatcher said ‘ninety,’ not ‘nineteen.’ The dispatcher was known for mumbling, after all. But, what kind of a ninety year old male goes on a ski-doo? Silence creates insanity.


Finally, I heard a voice over the scanner. CPR was in progress. The EMTs did what is called a ‘scoop-n-go.’ If the person they are tending to has any hope, it is by getting them to the hospital as quickly as humanly possible. I heard no more from the scanner that night.


Myspace is the teenager’s best means of communication and sometimes it is man-kind’s curse. When I logged on I found dozens of bulletin posts informing everyone that someone, SOMEONE, died in a ski-doo accident in Middleton and that two others were injured, critically. The bulletins poured in dozen after dozen until a verdict was finally reached. JT LaMantia had passed away. The details were never shared with the public of how gruesome it was. Rumors spread that he died instantly. Other rumors spread that he received a concussion and then drowned. Some say he felt no pain, but how can we be sure of that? We can only hope.


JT, I never knew you very well, but I learned a great deal from you. You taught me a more valuable lesson than anyone here on this earth could teach me now. I learned the value of a minute. I learned the value of a loved one. Watching Maddie in so much pain scares me. I sometimes remember seeing her after your funeral opening up your old locker and placing a single red rose in there, then silently pressing the locker door shut knowing that you would never meet her there again. Your memory haunts her, I know it still does. She cried herself to sleep for months. “It is the dead, not the living, who make the longest demands.” (Antigone, Sophocles) JT, your demand will remain perpetually. Your demand was to live life; your demand was to love life.











Essay for Foundations English, 101.
In the peer reviews today, the only advice I had was to nix the part about graduation.
I added it for irony and parallelism. Key phrases are re-used in the part about the funeral.
Should I change anything? Make the parallelism more dramatic? Make it more ironic? I was trying to be subtle so that people had to relate to it more.. I don't want to be like "and it was ironic that one week ago the graduates of FHS were in black.. what common color."


Here are the reviews I got.

Reader one:
"The story is really touching! I could really feel myself being there and watching what you watched. I don't like the beginning though, it doesn't really have much to do w/ the whole point of your essay."
To the prompt of: "review the story, looking at the way the suspense builds and resovles itself. Does the drama lose intensity?" "I thought it was good. Drama and tension build. I wanted to keep reading to find out what happened.
To the prompt of: "Point to any descriptive details that are especially effective. Note any places that need for specific description. Also indicate unnecessary descriptions or irrelevant dialog." "I think the whole 'graduation' intro was irrelevant. Maybe just briefly talk about how the class about you had just graduated and it was a time to celebrate."
"You go from past to present a lot. Good conclusion! Great story! Really good sentence structure, for the most part. I was really into the story!"

Then she went thru my paper and I'm convinced that she doesn't appreciate creative writing. She nixed a properly used semi-colon. Here is the example: "I watched anxiously as my friends, my class-mates, and my high-school family walked past me; next year, it would be me in their place." Properly used. Excellent form, Smee! A semi colon brings together two independant clauses. The clause that those people passed me is one clause. The second is that next year it would be me in their place.
"He, unlike me, was the person that everyone knew." The corrector of my paper believes that instead of me, I should write "myself." She also says that that entire paragraph does not flow well. She also says that I should re-word the sentence: "I do not know if it is greedy to claim this event that was not mine as an event that changed my perspective of life." It makes sense to me, especially in context. Haha, she wasn't even consistent in correcting, cause I used "me" instead of "myself" in an identical sentenceeeee. She wasn't done, though. She wrote that I ought to re-word this sentence: "One class-mate I directly observed was previously a great friend to me, almost a brother." I don't find that sentence awkward or confusing. I shouldn't capitalize "Big Mikey" even though it is his nick-name.... and she didn't like my redundancy to make a big point. "The words that were spoken were moving. The words that were spoken were filled with emotion and love and grief." She says I ought to nix the whole second "the words that were spoken" and turn it into an "and."

The other peer-editor just praised my work. Yes, I like that, but come on, tear my paper apart just a smidge. I may complain about it, but it makes me doubt my work and second guess myself.

Now, more than ever, I want to be an editor. :P

So, I couldn't really stand seeing the girl edit my paper; I'm quite bad at taking critisism. But, nonetheless, I still want it.



This may be mostly to Bex, but edit my paper, please? :P I won't slam YOU on my blog... but that is because you're not a general snot in class as well.





Elena, my room-mate has been listening to the same song on repeat for the last 24 hours.. Nay, not listening to, meerly, singing along with.. Granted, I know I listen to the same songs sometimes time and time again...... but this is taking it to a new extreme.