Gareth Keohane …

A Lost Point In Time

[Hook]
Life almost moves faster than one can keep up with. Closing our eyes to life always
makes us miss something important or even life-changing. I closed my eyes to the world for a
time and when I opened them my brother was depressed.
[Context]
4th grade is an empty hole in my mind, a time and place that merely exists through
others’ experiences of it. I’m sure it happened but I only have scant memories of it. Of course,
since I was bored all the time my attention to what was going on around me dropped I was
practically asleep sitting there at a desk. Now, this is my single greatest regret.
[Story]
Like I said I could never pay attention in my 4th-grade class, but the problem wasn’t me
it was the teacher and the content. Thus as I dazed off in his class, still somehow able to keep
my grades up, I missed one of the worst things to ever happen to my brother.
This teacher of ours was known as a joker and ‘fun’ but in reality, he was much worse.
From the few scraps of memory and stories from classmates at the time, I have pieced
together that our teacher would pick on certain people in our class, most often the ones who
weren’t the perfect little kid. The name that I’ll never forget was given to my brother and was a
not-so-subtly hidden insult.
We were all impressionable kids at the time and didn’t understand the impact that we
would cause when that name spread like wildfire. For a time most of the class would use it from
time to time. Now my brother didn’t just sit there and take it, he took action asking us to stop,
and except for a few people we did, he even asked the teacher to stop but of course, he didn’t.
At this time I was still fairly oblivious to what exactly was happening as I was often zoned out.
The true impacts of this never hit me until a year later, one of the best years of
elementary school, a year when I awoke. My brother was depressed, and the largest contributor
had been our 4th-grade teacher. Luckily we had a good counselor at the school so it all went
pretty well. But depression never leaves, it’s like a cat, it always comes back. These things
leave their mark, I may not have been directly affected but I had to see the effects on the people
around me.
I remember a conversation later on in life. I was talking to my brother on the bus. As we
rumbled along toward home we were also taking a rough trip through time.
“You know Tegan never stopped calling me that name,” My brother said.
Tegan, somebody who I have long lost contact with. He had never stopped, he had
continued making fun of my brother even when we could all see what had happened. It angers
me, I wish I had stood face to face with Tegan and told him to stop. I wish I could have done
anything to help.
“You know I will always be here to listen to you,” Is usually something I say several times
over these trips through time.
I distantly remember one day when we found out that my brother was lost in the grey
scape of depression. He had been quieter than usual and wasn’t interacting much. We noticed
pretty quickly and soon enough he was talking with the school counselor. I guess we got lucky
because it's not like he hadn’t been depressed before that day.
Gareth Keohane …

These days through community and having the space for my brother to talk to us things
have smoothed out. Every year the topic comes up less and less as we slowly leave this
problem behind.
And veiled in each time I say “You know I will always be here to listen to you” are the
words “I failed you at the time. I need to make up for that.”
Every day I hope that I have.

[Resolution]
I wish for many things, but the one that would help me the most is my wish that I had the
strength confidence, and presence to speak out and stop this all from happening. Things are
always happening in our lives, no matter how hidden they may be by boredom. I know for a fact
that you can look up and see that the world has changed.

As a final note, I hope that this teacher never meant for this and if made known of this he would
be sincerely sorry.