Purple Faced

I love my job. There is an endless list of reasons why. I won't bore you with that. But, I do want you to know that part of the reason I love my job is because no day is the same. You have to be on your toes at all times. Boy, was I lucky to be on my toes today!

In a nice straight line, walking back from lunch, something happened. I turned around to catch the tail end of one of my students falling flat on her back. Mind you, we were in the tile-floored hallway. For the half second before I figured it out, I assumed she had tripped. There was no way she tripped though, she made no attempt to catch herself. My inhabitions were proven correctly as my class informed me that she just passed out. I was to her in a split second and her eyes were rolled to the back of her head. She was lying unresponsive. I kept calm on the outside as my class of little 10-year eyes were watching my every move. Inside, my heart was in my stomach and I was panicked Utterly panicked.

A teacher passing by took my class back to the room so they weren't standing there, crowding the scene. The girl woke up, immediately sat up, and asked what happened. To my relief and amazement, she showed no signs of any medical ailments besides her pale face.

We walked down to the nurse and she spoke clearly and was able to answer all questions accurately. Other than the large bump on the back of her head, she was fine. Thank goodness. With that, the empty feeling that took over my body as I watched her drop to the floor did not dissipate.

Going back to my class, I thanked the teacher that saved them from seeing the whole scene play out. We sat down and needed to talk as they were all extremely concerned and scared for their classmate. One little girl approached me quietly and told me what happened exactly before the incident. She told me that "Mary" was trying to make her face turn purple by holding her breath. She told "Mary" to stop, but she kept going.

Can you believe it? Here I was, going out of my mind considering the medical explanation for this incident, and she had been holding her breath. Holding her breath! Now that she was okay, I could have killed her. Not really, but come on!

The more I thought about, the more impressed I became. It sure takes some will power to hold your breath long enough to make yourself faint. Most people get too scared to get to that point. Will power, determination, perseverance, grit, shear stupidity, whatever you want to call it!

These are the days I would really love to come home to someone. To share, to vent, and to help me find the humor. In the spirit of the holiday, I am thankful that the technology we have today allows me to do this with Jeff even when he is not present. And of course, I am thankful that "Mary" came out of this all with a mere bump on the head!