Last Saturday night..
I was taking the Metro North with a family member into Westchester when we got delayed at one stop. The conductor announced the delay was caused by train traffic caused by a fatality at Scarsdale. The moment he said that there was a murmur of speculation in the car.
As we stopped by Scarsdale we saw the train on the northbound track and a ladder that led to the rails and which I assume where they found the body. Standing on the platform in between the ladder and the train was a conductor with a grim look on his face.
Later on that night, I would learn that someone did jump in front of the train but didn’t know the full details until Monday morning.
Look at this beautiful face.
Akshay Menon was just a baby. A child. He was a young boy that barely knew life, what demons tortured him to take his own life? I can’t imagine what his parents are going through right now. They have my heartfelt condolences.
Remember my rant against going to my reunion? So it is no big surprise that I hated high school. There was many a day when I felt my life was falling apart because of my grades, my social life,getting into college and other incidents. When I look back on it now, it all seems rather foolish. But back then it was all I knew. It is all any of us know when we are at that age.
For a lot of people, high school is the highlight of their lives. For some of us the fact that we simply survived 4 years is good enough for us. I was in the latter category.
You know what I learned? Life does not end with high school; in fact it does not even begin there. It is just 4 years of your life. After that you have the rest of your life to see what is really out there and what you are really about.
As we stopped by Scarsdale we saw the train on the northbound track and a ladder that led to the rails and which I assume where they found the body. Standing on the platform in between the ladder and the train was a conductor with a grim look on his face.
Later on that night, I would learn that someone did jump in front of the train but didn’t know the full details until Monday morning.
SCARSDALE - Students walked to Scarsdale High School silently this morning, their somber faces reflecting the widespread shock at a freshman's suicide over the weekend.
Akshay Menon, 14, jumped in front of a Metro-North express train at 9:10 p.m. Saturday, about a mile from the Post Road school building. The tragic news quickly spread to his classmates, more than 200 of whom are connected to him through the Facebook social networking Web site.
The school is offering mental health services today for its students, particularly the school's 375 freshmen, said Victoria Presser, district spokeswoman.
"Administrators are going into the classrooms, particularly the ninth-grade classrooms, throughout the high school just to listen to the students and help them with the process of dealing with this," she said. "We provide as much support as we can."
Scarsdale High School has about 1,450 students in grades 9 through 12. Presser said she did not know how long Menon had been a student in the district.
Chloe Baum, 16, a Scarsdale High sophomore, said she did not know Menon well, but mutual friends had told her he felt pressured to achieve top grades. Still, she said, no one had thought he was depressed enough to kill himself.
"They didn't see any signs," she said. "A lot of people seemed to like him and thought he was a funny kid."
Look at this beautiful face.
Akshay Menon was just a baby. A child. He was a young boy that barely knew life, what demons tortured him to take his own life? I can’t imagine what his parents are going through right now. They have my heartfelt condolences.
Remember my rant against going to my reunion? So it is no big surprise that I hated high school. There was many a day when I felt my life was falling apart because of my grades, my social life,getting into college and other incidents. When I look back on it now, it all seems rather foolish. But back then it was all I knew. It is all any of us know when we are at that age.
For a lot of people, high school is the highlight of their lives. For some of us the fact that we simply survived 4 years is good enough for us. I was in the latter category.
You know what I learned? Life does not end with high school; in fact it does not even begin there. It is just 4 years of your life. After that you have the rest of your life to see what is really out there and what you are really about.
posted by Grunt at
9:00 AM
