Chase Student Face Plants

At Barbie Hagwon last week, I needed some photocopies taken care of while I was in class with Chase Student and Friends (you may remember Chase Student from such special moments as: “Sometimes I create stupid nicknames for myself. Then, when people call me by said nicknames, I cry”). I like to nominate Chase Student to do anything that requires movement, whenever the opportunity arises. I’ve found that giving him the chance to expend some excess energy is really the only way that he’ll later be able to focus his attention on something (namely, me) for more than 30 seconds. As expected, Chase Student jumped at the chance to get off his ass. I advised him to be no longer than five minutes.

Ten minutes goes by.

Leo Student points out to me that Chase Student has been gone for a while. Given that I know how to keep track of time too, I had taken note of Chase Student’s tardiness five minutes earlier. I had been giving him the benefit of the doubt and wasn’t particularly concerned at that point. Ten minutes was pushing it, so I asked Leo Student to stick his head out the door and see if Chase Student had been eaten by wolves. Leo Student was very prompt in his search; less than a minute later he returns to inform me that Chase Student was very sad. Very, very sad! Just in case that didn't get the message across, Leo Student began wiping fake tears away from his cheeks. This warmed my heart (I like to think that he learned that from me).

After recovering from the awesomeness that was Leo Student parroting my condescending gesture, I was troubled to hear that Chase Student was having special problems. Then I remembered that last time Chase Student was very, very sad, it was because other people were calling him a stupid name that he had created for himself. Suspecting shenanigans, I excused myself from the class so that I could go clean up whatever mess it was that he had caused for himself.

I found Chase Student bawling in the main office. One of the other teachers and The Boss Man were attending to him. One look at the right side of Chase Student's face and it was clear why. Chase Student had apparently decided that scraping your knee isn’t particularly bad ass; face planting and scraping half of the skin off your cheek is clearly the more impressive battle scar.

I kid now, but I felt awful and largely responsible for Chase Student’s accident. If I hadn’t sent him to photocopy alone, he might not have fallen. I apologized profusely to my coworkers. In response, they assured me that this wasn’t my fault, not to worry, go back to class and they would patch him up. I returned to class not feeling even a bit relieved. Chase Student followed a few minutes later sporting a brand spanking new bandage and a serious case of the sniffles. The teacher who had helped patch him up followed shortly behind to inform me that Chase Student had completed the photocopying that I had asked him to do without any issue. Instead of coming back to class immediately afterwards as instructed, he decided to jump outside and run in circles with a friend of his. Somehow this led to him tripping over his own feet and landing splat on his face. “See? Not your fault”, my coworker advised me.

Chase Student’s face healed up quite nicely within the week, but he’s never again allowed to go photocopying alone. Next time, when he gets distracted by headlights and runs into traffic, he might not heal up quite as nicely. At that point, "See? Not your fault", really isn't going to cut it.