fractions and smoking saves a life

so there really is rarely a dull moment at the center i work at on monday and wednesday nights. it's an inner-city site. some of our staff won't work there. it's too inner city for them. but i like it there. and i get along very well with our clients who are working to get their geds there. i actually always look forward to mon and wed. nights.

and the evening started with me subbing for the regular teacher. when he called to ask if i could cover for him until he got there, i said, "sure, anything particular you want me to cover?" and to my dismay, he said "anything with math, because i'm doing language arts when i get there." i said, "ok." but as you might well know, i hate math. i'm bad at math. no, i really truly suck at math.

but i'm a trooper so i go into the classroom, and i tell the class that the teacher will be late, and that i've been asked to work with them on math, so what i want to know before i pull out materials is what they'd been working on and what was giving them trouble, so we could jumble through it together.

and right away, they all agreed on fractions. they are struggling with fractions. and i'm thinking "yeah, i can do fractions. i get them! i can handle this! yeah!" so i go back to our storage cabinet and grab some materials to use to get us started.

and i start very simply. just review. and slowly, together we worked, and it's one of those great teacher moments when you actually see lightbulbs going off above their heads.

when the teacher got there an hour in, he tells them they can go take a break, and when they come back they'll work on the language arts. well usually, all of these people are smokers. and so about half of them went outside to smoke, and the other half came over to tell me how much they had appreciated my math lesson. and they told me how no disrespect to xxxxxx, but that they really liked it better when i was teaching math, because i was both funny, and i explained things so simply and step by step, that they actually got it. according to them, xxxxxxx goes too fast.

so i laughed, and said "well, that's because i suck at math, and i know exactly where a mistake can be made, so i slow it down, and break it down how i've always needed it broken down."

so part of the reason i'm telling you this is to brag. -that while i suck at math, it appears that i'm a great math teacher. but also part of the reason is to tell you that my flatterers did not get outside to smoke during this break.

so because they didn't, about an hour later, they asked xxxxxxx, if they could have another break to go out to smoke.
and he agrees, and i'm sitting at the computer doing my work, when xxxxxxx comes up, and says, "can you call for an ambulance, there's an old man out in the parking lot who has fallen down, and he thinks he broke his hip, he can't move."

and so i go to the phone and call 911 to have the ambulance come while xxxxxxx goes out to hold an umbrella over the poor guy who is lying on the ground in the rain.

and then i hear the story of how he was found. on the second smoke break, that was called for the nicotine-deprived smokers who spent their first break inside with me, the smokers found the guy on the ground and they came in to get xxxxxxx, who told me to call 911.

and the guy was an older man, in his late 70's i guess, who had been at a meeting upstairs at the center earlier but had left the meeting early because he needed to get home because he was preparing to go in to have a defibrilator placed in the morning. and the meeting he'd left was scheduled to go on for at least another hour. our class was scheduled to meet for another hour and 1/2. so potentially, the poor guy with a heart problem would have laid in the cold rain for 2 hours in all if my smokers hadn't discovered him. i can't think it would have ended well.

but discover him they did, 911 was called, and they came and took him to the local hospital, and it appears that all will be well, afterall.

and that's how fractions and smoking saved a life.