WHAT WILL THEY SAY?

A TV report about a tragic accident at a local high school got me to thinking.

A student crossing the street in front of the school was hit and killed by a car driven by another student. In an attempt to boost ratings by appealing to the morbid curiosity of the general public, the reporter stuck a microphone in the shocked faces of the grieving student witnesses and asked them to describe their friend who had just been killed. The curious answers were, "He was very respectful. He wasn't the kind who'd try to start fights. He would just try to get along and be nice." And, "He was your basic, all-around student. He wasn't into drugs or anything".

Do those on-the-spot eulogies sound strange?

"He was a great kid. He wasn't a mass murder or anything."

Maybe it's just me, but I don't expect a kid to start fights or to do drugs. Are antisocial behaviors so much a part of our young people's world that people are defined by their absence? Is our society at a point when someone abstains from deviant behavior, we find that newsworthy?

The words used to describe people may say as much about the times we live in as the people we're describing. What will they say about you when you're moving on to life--phase 2?

"He was a good guy, never cheated on his income taxes and almost never cheated on his wife."

"She was a loyal employee, didn't lie or steal hardly anything."

"What a great cousin, never knocked my teeth down my throat with a baseball bat."


Lesson: Be so much there is little room for what you're not.