Drama. There has been ever so much drama lately.

I am reminded of the time my 9th grade English teacher intoned in her gratingly awful faux-Brtish accent that a child dying in its cradle of Suden Infant Death Syndrome, while tragic, was not a tragedy. A tragedy, she maintained, involved a tragic hero or heroine whose fatal flaw brought on ruin and grief. I notice now, looking at the American Heritage Dictionary, that the meaning most people associate with the word, "a disastrous event, especially one involving distressing loss or injury to life," is in fact listed and therefore correct.

I hesitate to think what she would think of my use of the term "drama" to apply to the events taking place in my school over the past few days. Would she wince, or has she mellowed with age? Drama in this sense, referring to events that were overly-dramatic, seems highly appropriate. Then again, given my seventh-graders, everything is dramatic.