Growing up, it seemed that he attended a funeral every month or so for a friend or classmate that had been devoured by the creatures that ruled the night. Children were often eaten or worse by the evil things that lurked in the shadows that nobody talked about, but everyone knew were there.
When he'd graduated high school, his class had been one of the smallest in Sunnydale history.
When he'd started teaching as an optimistic (or rather at least not nearly as cynical as he was now) young man, he'd tried to connect with his students. There he had been, a tiny geek standing in front of the chalkboard watching the little smiling faces of the third graders he'd been assigned to vanish one by one over the year. The lucky ones had moved away never to return, while the unlucky ones...
It was much easier to hate them now. If he didn't care about them, he wouldn't mourn them when they were gone.