Teaching These Days Can Be Murder

(I am in my first semester of college, and one of my teachers for a music theory class starts showing up irregularly. I am in his first class, which meets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. After about a week of it, I happen to run into a classmate from that class.)

Classmate: “Remember how he canceled all classes on Wednesday?”

Me: “Yeah, that following Friday he said he’d been sick and didn’t want to spread it to any of the music students.”

Classmate: “Yep. And then his car broke down on Monday, so only our class was canceled.”

Me: “And now today.”

Classmate: “About that… as I was walking by his door and saw the note, I said, ‘What did he do? Die?’ One of the other teachers said, ‘Yes,’ and walked away.”

Me: “What? Was she joking?”

(It turns out… no, they weren’t joking. Later that evening word got out. The previous night, he had apparently collected his mother from the nursing home, strangled her to death with a rope, and then hanged himself. In the meantime, the college bent over backwards getting us a substitute and creating many memorials for him. I don’t know how long that lasted, however, because not everyone was pleased with the college’s decision to honor him. As one angry student said, “The ONLY reason he’s not in jail for murder is because he killed himself!” I suspect they eventually realized it was rather… awkward to memorialize a murderer, despite how much they missed him.)