THE DISREGARDED

Lately, I’ve been noticing, and thinking about, people who don’t seem to be winners. I pass them each day – the people with forlorn looks and stooping shoulders, those for whom life seems to be an overwhelming weight. I see them in the news – the increasing numbers of those with no job, the vast numbers of impoverished families, the millions of forsaken refugees. They seem to be ever-present, these people who carry such distressing burdens on their shoulders, who seem to have simply lost the game of life. Sadly, when I was teaching, I saw them in my own classes, too, though certainly not to such extremes. I saw the kids who had no friends, who spent recess by themselves, lost in their own breakable worlds. I saw the students who never seemed to “make it” in school, the ones who got C’s semester after semester, who never seemed to be “winners” at anything. Sadly, it’s so easy to fail to notice these kids. The winners -- the ‘A’ students, the class leaders, the well-liked kids -- take up so much of the spotlight that the ordinary, everyday students often get left outside of the light. Like the outcasts of the world – the homeless, the poor, the peculiar – these disregarded students, I guess, must always struggle by themselves to bring some small, unnoticed distinction to their lives.