Week 2 Survivor Idol TW be advised
Nov. 2nd, 2020 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
before the day even begins. Everything you’ve meticulously planned for begins this morning.
You shower frantically before your child awakens and dress quickly. It’s the first day of school and people are looking to you to lead the way gently but firmly, as you’ve done for the past 10 years. Your career means everything. Breathe deep…You got this…
Educating youth right is the best way to produce a better society of respect, kindness, talent and critical thinking abilities. Your job is everything…
You’ve hired a new art teacher who has great project ideas for incorporating global awareness into the curriculum, and a new math teacher who shows promise for raising district standardized test scores and for teaching in the newly implemented gifted program. Furniture in the staff lounge has been updated over the summer as were the three copy machines. You’re excited to see these changes as you wriggle into your skirt and new blouse. Fresh beads of perspiration roll down your just-showered back as you lift your toddler out of her bed, change her clothing and hand her a cereal bar before buckling her into the car seat.
The morning DJ on the car radio tells listeners it’s going to be nearly 100 degrees for a high today, and you’re thankful that your board of education approved spending on a new air conditioning system for your modest middle school last year. Your successful plea that to keep children at their healthiest and most focused for learning depends on effective climate control in the academic setting was the final push for a better HVAC system. Your teachers applaud your efforts.
You’re thankful for your career, and you remember to pick up the three dozen doughnuts as a welcome-back gesture of support for your amazing staff of teachers, aides and maintenance workers who break their backs every school day and beyond to provide top care and learning opportunities for young minds. You pull into your parking spot and grab those boxes on the passenger seat and stride into your school, smiling and charged up for another great year.
Around 2 PM you get your first break of the day to sit down and eat half of a left over doughnut left in one of the bakery boxes. You stare at the bottom of the white box at the grease spots and decide that although everyone likes donuts, maybe next time you’ll get bagels.
And you suddenly feel sick to your stomach as you tremble and realize the horror of a mistake you made at 8 AM.
You dash to your nice car parked out front to discover that in all of your enthusiasm and hyper-focus on the first day back to school for your staff, your 16-month-old daughter has perished slowly and silently from heat stroke in your closed up SUV while you were off being everything to everyone else for hours inside your “perfect” building.
.............
This news story made local headlines in 2007.
I cannot imagine this mother’s thinking on that fateful day. Initially I wanted to judge the —ck out of her. How could she? I’ve been super tired and distracted but would never forget to drop off my kid at day care.
Hell, I once quit a teaching job because I was being forced to put my work life ahead of my kids’ well-being. She was criticized by some folks as being too career-centered and privileged because she lived in an affluent community and drove a Mercedes. However, this mom was never charged by authorities and her school community actually rallied and supported her in her time of loss.
Part of me thinks Mrs. Slaby should have known she was in over her head between her home and professional life and should have taken a break or relied more on others for help. If she was so highly-qualified in her position and so well schooled, she should have had better sense. I would never want this person to be my principal-boss. I’ll be honest, this over-10-year-old news story yanks, gnaws and tortures my heartstrings so badly that I can’t feel any love.
On the other hand, part of me knows that there is no punishment greater than the perpetual self doubt, self loathing and an inability to self forgive which she will live with for the rest of her days. What happened was tragic, inexcusable, and neglectful, but her life is ruined forever, and it was her own fault. The day this story came out in my home town I instantly felt disgusted and punched in the gut. But also, my mom-heart goes out to Brenda, her husband and older daughter because I do not believe this educator is sociopathic. She was just incredibly hyper-driven to be excellent to the point she fell overboard and inadvertently dragged her baby down with her.
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Date: 2020-11-02 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-02 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-02 06:02 pm (UTC)I don't think any punishment she could have received would ever be anything but pale in comparison to what she will do to herself for the rest of her life. It makes me really sad, actually.
Anyway, it was a solid entry and I didn't see the flip coming which is, I'm sure, part of the strength of the piece and I know you'll want to hold onto that. But, at the same time, I see you did include a trigger warning tag! So that's really thoughtful. I have PTSD (not related to this!) and got accidentally triggered for the first time a couple weeks back and it was shockingly difficult. I hadn't expected that. I'm so used to people downplaying TWs as sort of a sappy soft-feelings thing that I didn't realise it really can be easy to become triggered and it really can throw someone's life off track! Anyway, I think it's great you're adding one- but it -is- displaying at the bottom of the entry, so you might want to consider putting it up at the top where it can do the most for anyone who might need it! :>
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Date: 2020-11-02 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-02 08:22 pm (UTC)Well done. I'm just sorry it's based on a true story, and sorry it happens in the first place!
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Date: 2020-11-02 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-02 09:22 pm (UTC)I feel so much for the people this happens to that I sometimes feel a bit defensive and upset with other people (often found in the comments sections of such news stories) who want to condemn them as uncaring murderers. I'm like of course they're not sociopaths, of course they shouldn't be punished, it's a *horrible* accident.
I think one of my big resistances to clockwork-like routine is my fear of exactly this kind of incident. Because if you're going, going, going, and on the exact same routine almost all the time, and then you have one day where you're supposed to do something slightly different... Your brain just short circuits and you forget.
I drove with my little baby one time. He was 8 months old. I was tired and my mind was filled with a thousand things as I drove home. He suddenly said something, a little babble noise. And I looked up in my rear view mirror, to the backseat mirror and saw his face, and realized - I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten he was even with me. I hadn't stopped yet, so who knows if I would have remembered as I got out of the car. But I was so freaked out because that had already been a fear of mine, and to realize how it happens, how it feels. Oh my god.
It's our brains betraying us by trying to narrow our focus, cut out our attention/memory from things we do daily, because there are other things vying for our attention. It's just the worst kind of accident. I feel so, so, deeply sorry for anyone this has happened to. I think the worst mistake anyone can make is judging folks like this to the point they feel like it could never happen to them, because it could happen to any of us. It's one of those faults of human brain wiring, and it's devastating but true to know it can and does happen. That poor family.
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Date: 2020-11-02 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-03 04:05 pm (UTC)Every summer, I think we are all traumatized with these stories and utterly staggered by how they happen and why they happen and ....
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Date: 2020-11-03 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-03 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-03 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 01:18 am (UTC)Such a heartbreaking truth. Agonizing at the time and even more so now because you tell it so very well.
I'm torn because I was the daughter of a job-driven mother who barely knew I existed when she had her dream job, but at the same time, such a tragic mistake...none of us can really imagine what that's like or how anyone could live with it.
This is so very well written and so very heartbreaking to relive through your words. Well done!
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Date: 2020-11-04 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-05 07:34 pm (UTC)I can understand how it happens but it terrifies me to imagine it. I mean so far the worst thing I've forgotten in the back of the car was a dozen eggs.
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Date: 2020-11-05 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-06 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-06 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-06 11:22 pm (UTC)I understand the rush to judgment, because how could any parent forget their own child that they never dropped off at daycare?
But then I think about, say, the ADHD entry that Meg wrote, and I think about ADHD hyperfocus and time-blindness, and how things can just "disappear" when your mind is on something else. And then I think of being that mother, and having such an awful thing happen. I wonder that she hasn't committed suicide, because I don't know how a person could want to go on after that.
That poor little girl. *aches*
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Date: 2020-11-07 02:41 am (UTC)