Two Concussions in a Day

Today I half witnessed two concussions. And my half witnessed, I mean that I witnessed the immediate aftermath, but not the actual concussions itself, because I happened to be meters away from the incidents - though I heard the loud accompanying thumps. Prior to today, I don't think I witnessed anything remotely close to concussions before, and it's strange to think of two of them happening in my vicinity within a span of 6 hours.

The first concussion was when I was at work. Today I had an in-school suspension assignment, and I was sitting in a room with my student during class transition time when I heard a loud thunk and yelling. I commented to student that it sounded like something was being murdered outside. When the crazy sounds still persisted for about a minute, I opened the door to look and saw a bunch of students gathered outside excitedly, and saw that the source of the commotion was a really violent fight between two female students. A teacher was already there, but the girls still persisted.

I didn't know what to do, and when I turned back I saw my student craning his head out of the door trying to look, but he didn't manage to see anything as it was around the corner. We went back in the room and I closed the door, but when the yelling was still there a minute later, I went out to try and disperse the watching students and a student told me, "hell no, I ain't missing this." The status of the fight looked exactly the same as it had earlier, and the same female teacher was still trying to break it up, while more teachers came. I went back to the room, and after about another minute the chaos died down, and I opened the door to see one of the students still agitated and shouting as she was led away.

Later the teachers in the staff room were talking about the fight. Apparently one of the students said "fight me" to another student she already had problems with, and the other student dutifully grabbed her head and slammed it against the wall. Obviously the student who had her head slammed into the wall was fine, because she was well enough to continue the fight.

The second concussion happened when I was taking the M15-SBS bus home. I boarded at 57th Street, and at 50th Street when the bus was stopped to let passengers get on and off, we heard a loud thunk and noises of a commotion. A kid standing next to me said, "Is it a fight? Sounds like a punch." This set off the old ladies near us as they got confused and somehow word got relayed that someone had fallen. An old lady then said, "that sounded more like a head hitting something." Then a few passengers ran to the front and told the bus driver, "Someone fell, don't move the bus," and I wondered if someone had fallen under the bus.

Again I didn't know what to do in the situation. I felt bad for whoever had fallen, but I didn't want to be a rubber-necking bystander as it wasn't like I had any medical training and could help. Also I wanted to go home, and felt bad for thinking that. I didn't know whether I should get off the bus and stand around or stay on. Either way was equally useless, but I figured at least by staying on the bus I wouldn't be blocking help or gawking. After about a minute word spread on the bus that it was being taken out of service cause of the accident, and we all got off. Outside, I saw a white-haired lady on the ground, her grey handbag propped up under her head as people tried asking her questions, but no one seemed medically trained.

Just as another M15-SBS appeared in the horizon, a woman in scrubs and with a stethoscope around her neck came running from the South and identified herself as someone who worked nearby. This was comforting, and around 80% of the passengers on the bus I was on got on this other M15-SBS, as about 10% stayed behind with the lady and 10% for some reason were still on the old bus. And so off we went, crammed into this other bus, with some passengers telling the passengers on this bus about what had happened.

It has been a very peculiar day, and one in which I wished I could do more instead of standing by helplessly. But I guess everyone has their own niche in life, and mine isn't being big enough to pull apart students (which I'm sure is against the law) or knowing what to do when someone gets injured.

Ceiling

On Sunday after coming back from a night in NJ with my Aunt and Uncle, Jon and I were greeted with a huge mess when we opened the front door. My first thought was that Saffron had destroyed something, but then it immediately went to "what kind of white paper do we have so much off that he would destroy it like this?"

It turned out of course, to be something far beyond Saffron. The floor was wet and our clothes in the cupboard were wet too. The ceiling light looked like it was filled with dirty brown water that threatened to spill out. The bathroom floor had dirt all over it, like there was a flood that had subsided and left silt in its place, but the tiles were still wet. The toilet seat was covered with droplets of dirty water, and the Archie comics that were on top of the toilet cistern were wet too.

When we called the Superintendent, he said, "Oh yes, the kitchen pipe of the apartment above yours burst."

So Jon and I ended up spending the better half of the rest of the day, from noon when we came home till bed time, cleaning up the mess and feeling frustrated. I tried my best, but the two pairs of shoes I left out that got caught up in the mess were ruined. Jon tossed the pair of shoes that he left out that had gotten drenched too. As fate obviously still has it out for us (to an extent: our material losses were less than $150), Sunday, Monday and today have been humid days filled with rain. The apartment has a funky smell to it, and the floor is still damp and cold to the touch. Online it says that you need to hire a professional drying crew when this happens, but I highly doubt my avaricious landlord will do anything about it. Sigh.

Meanwhile, every few hours, another piece of the ceiling falls off and the floor becomes coated in a powdery substance that is invisible to the eye.

Wedding Nightmare

I had a nightmare last night about my wedding. I dreamt for some reason that it was less than 24 hours away, and that I had neglected to check my wedding outfit and in fact only had a veil, and no wedding dress. Then I realised that I had forgotten to order the dresses for my bridesmaids, so they had nothing to wear (this part might be realistic, I'm still procrastinating on ordering their dresses). Of course I felt very stressed in my dream from all the running about, and even when I woke up and realised it wasn't real I still feel the physiological signs of stress.

This dream has made me feel annoyed because: 1) since when am I so unprepared for an event of that sort? 2) I don't like feeling stressed 3) I don't think I'm the sort of person to stress out over a wedding.

In other news I am still working on a paper that is due for my last class of the semester. I have found it considerably harder to juggle part-time work (as a sub nonetheless) and school, and have found myself slightly clueless at the deadlines (so ok, maybe point 1 is becoming true). So after today, my first semester at Hunter College will be over, and I'll have a break of about a week before Summer classes start - joy.