That depends on the size of the school you went to. With 500 kids, it's unlikely to have even a single leukemia case in 13 years. It gets more likely with 1000 kids. And if you went to a giant school with 2000 kids, there probably was a case or two.
A reply to a comment with a false generalization and a personal anecdote.
I'm gen X from a country where schools typically have 200-500 students. Small enough that rare things like leukemia didn't happen in most schools. They were something that happened to a kid in the news but not to a kid you kind of knew in your school. People generally didn't talk about leukemia or think about it, because it did not affect the life they experienced.
Rare things still happened, but they were different for each school. In my school, someone I knew was murdered while visiting her family in Russia.
A very HN reply to a poetic and heartfelt comment.