A Young Man of Unmistakable, Now Annihilated, Potential

I was signing out on my time card at San Fernando High on Tuesday afternoon when Hector, a senior, materialized in front of me.

“Manny’s dead, Miss Pike,” he said breathlessly. “Did you hear?”

I was confused at this abrupt message from a student standing in a teachers-only domain. “Who’s dead?”

“Manny. He died in a car crash. Didn’t you hear the announcement?”

I reached out in Hector’s direction, as if to connect with this awful news. I thought he spoke of a Manuel I currently have in class.

“The Manny who’s a junior?”

“No. Manny Osorio from our class last year. You know. Thin. Kinda quiet.” Hector almost pleaded with me to remember. “Manny, Miss Pike. Manny. “

Mentally, I flicked through the faces and names of that Honors Contemporary Composition class. I couldn’t picture him. I felt guilty.

“Oh, wait. He came to class only sometimes, right?” I asked Hector. I started to remember. “He didn’t talk much. And he was really a great writer.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hector said. “He was real smart. He was always in gifted classes.”

At home, I learned from the evening news that Manny was riding in a car in the middle of the night when a suspected burglar, fleeing from police, ran a red light at Sherman Way and Kester Avenue. There was a crash and Manny and two other boys were dead.

I sifted through a stack of photos. It’s my tradition every semester to snap pictures of every student. Each one is holding a piece of paper upon which he or she has recorded an admired self-trait.

Every year, a few students resolutely refuse the photo treatment. Manny was so private and stubborn, I thought. Maybe he never let me take the picture.

But there it was. With one of his rare smiles. And those big, intense, brown eyes.

His full presence was forming in my mind. I remembered how quickly those eyes changed from friendly amusement to guardedness, like a store window with blinds that suddenly slam down.

Manny never mixed much in that chatty, friendly class. He was something of a loner. He’d show up a few days, then disappear for more. I tried talking to him early in the semester. “Having problems?” I queried.

“Nah,” he said, looking like he wished I’d mind my own business.

“You are so smart, you know,” I told him in my best teacher-as-cheerleader-of-learning voice. “It would be nice to see you around class more frequently.”

He’d listen a bit impatiently, then nod to placate me. I had the sense he’d heard it all before.

Then I wouldn’t see him again for days.

Now, here’s a sad but true thing about teaching. When some students disappear from your classroom for long stretches, you think about them a bit, but the memory fades quickly, because they’ve not left their mark through personality or work. They never got around to doing any assignments. They left no traces to follow.

But there are those who blaze like fire, so that when they disappear there’s still a trail left behind, like that of a comet. Manny was a comet kind of kid. He was silent as a bug in class, except for a few sarcastic asides now and then. But man, could he write.

I remember one of the first things he turned in. It was a description of being up at bat in a baseball game. The way he painted the scene with words--the swish of the ball, the speed of it, the way it cuts through the air until its very seams fly in your face. “Manny wrote this? Quiet Manny?” I marveled at the discovery of his skill. I was amazed.

And also angered, in a way. For he was squandering his gift, I thought. He turned in only a few assignments. He showed up only sometimes.

“Don’t you realize you’re very talented?” I told him and told him again, half-cajoling, half-yelling. I wanted Manuel to show up every day and work on his writing. I wanted him to polish and improve.

I don’t know what he wanted. I don’t know what he planned for college or the future. I don’t know if he believed in himself.

Tuesday night I went through some student papers I kept from last year, hoping to find examples of his wonderfully descriptive writing. The only thing I located was an assignment I have students do at the beginning of each semester: discuss their writing difficulties and triumphs.

There were no positive observations in his half-page. In small, flowing script, he wrote, “I guess that I have problems in writing, and the biggest one I have is the problem of not knowing how to open up or begin an essay or sometimes just simple paragraphs. I think that sometimes I lose my readers’ attention. . . .”

That’s what Manny thought about his writing. But on the contrary, his knitting together of words tended to grab readers by their collars and pull them right into whatever he described. His writing had soul. Speed. Urgency. Life.

“You could be a novelist, if only you’d get your act together,” I’d grouse at him. “You could be a great journalist.” He’d smile a bit. Or just sit there, waiting for me to finish. He never showed any excitement at my dreams for him.

As I gazed at his snapshot, I broke into a big smile for just a moment. On a thin strip of paper, he is holding up to the camera, to the world, the perfect word for himself: “Independence”.

Now you’ll never be a journalist, Manuel. And you’ll never write the Great American Novel. And you’ll never even go to college.

But I need to tell you this, Manny, one writer to another. You were good with words. Very good. And the world’s a bit smaller, a bit colder, without you and your stories.

* POLICE REVIEW: LAPD says officers followed proper policy in deadly chase. B4