My
seventh grade home room was English with Ms. Macafee who loved to
break kids hearts. Not in any mean way she was really sweet but she
was always reading books to us which were just too sad. At eleven and
twelve the boys were passed where they could cry without public
shame. The girls, those lucky ducks, were never constrained by social
shame to hold in the sadness. Right at the start of the year she
broke out one of the most sad books in the history of the world with
'Where the Red Fern Grows'. She would read to us for about 30 minutes
every morning so we were only a week or so into school when she got
to the part about the dogs dying from trauma and sadness. She was
reading through the part where he has to bury Old Dan and there were
the start of whiperign and choked sobs from the class. I was so sad I
couldn't hold back the sadness so I hid my face in my elbow and let
out the tears. She read right on through to Little Ann dieing from
grief and that was just too sad for even the no crying tough boys in
the class and we were all crying and trying to avoid eye contact at
all cost. She finished up reading for the day and then wanted us to
answer questions but no one could gain the control necessary and she
let us deal with the vicarious pain of loosing imaginary dogs. We
were all trying to pull it together to avoid mockery from the other
kids in the hall when classes let out but our faces were to white and
our eyes to red to cover up the fact of our emotional breakdown. When
the bell rung and we had to go to the hall the kids from the other
home room switched with us and they all noticed that we had been
crying and we just told them that the part they were about to read in
the 'Fern' was really sad. They walked into the lachrymose lions den
cock sure about their abilities to keep it together in the face of
overwhelming sadness. We saw them after their class let out and saw
the effects of the power of great and terrible literature on their
faces too. No one ever said anything about anyone lack of toughness,
because we all knew, we were all there. We learned that the no crying
rule is not hard and fast and there is no shame in crying when your, or someone you love's, dog dies.
