I was wrong about Maddy.
Today I went to Happy Lemon to meet up with Maddy, the Pink Dot Club president. The Pink Dot Club is an organ donation club at my High School.
Remember October 2, 2018? That was the Pink Dot Club meeting which was supposed to be dedicated to Nicole. When Maddy glossed over the fact that Nicole died to talk about a class instead, I got mad.
Here’s an excerpt from my journal entry:
Club officers, that guy that got sent to detention because he confessed that he hated Ms. Hewitt or whatever has nothing to do with the club. Yet you spent more time on him than Nicole during the meeting that was supposed to be dedicated to her. Club officers, that guy is alive. He is breathing, he is eating, he isn’t in pain. Nicole is dead.
Club officers, I wonder how much you even care about your own club. Why are you officers of this club, when you can’t even dedicate a meeting without talking about your AP classes? Oh wait, I know! College! Club officers, you’re only here because you want to get into a good college. None of you care that a 10 year old girl is dead, you only care that it’ll look good on your college applications.
Yeah, that’s a little passive aggressive. Or just aggressive.
Later that day I emailed Amy McCarthy, someone who had a kidney transplant. This is another excerpt:
I thought the Pink Dot Club (the transplant club at Foothill) would be different but it’s exactly the same. Even the club president cares more about her 4 AP classes than she does about the patients at Stanford and UCSF.
Sometimes I feel like I want to drop out of school. I don’t want to be surrounded by people talking about APs or Colleges or Test Answers or SATs. It makes me angry how everyone only cares about themselves: what grades they have, what classes they have, what friends they have!
Reflecting back, I wasn’t angry because they ignored Nicole. Deep down inside, I think I was mad because I would never fit in with them.
If they glossed over Nicole’s death, then it implies they care more about their classes than someone that just died.
And their entire premise is for organ donation, and helping those waiting for an organ.
If they don’t care about organ donation, then where do I go?
Well, I was wrong. Or at least about Maddy.
Maddy is doing the Pink Dot Club because she wants to, not because of college. In fact, she didn’t even have college on her mind when creating this club.
It was because her cousin (who’s also named Justin) died from a heart disease.
I thought, “Her cousin just gave her the idea, but she did this for college.”
I was wrong, so I’m sorry Maddy.
