Once Upon a Time Today

Once upon a time today as I went to pick up my students from lunch, and they filed past me in a sort of amorphous blob, I caught words that went something like, "T.U. got his eyes poked by a tree branch."

Wait. What?

Like he ran into a tree? Like someone rammed him into the tree? Like he picked up a branch off the ground and it got thrown at his face?

He was last in line. Mostly because he was stumbling along the sidewalk, like he wasn't sure of where to walk. Like he couldn't quite see the door where I was standing.

When he finally reached me, aided by another student, I had him look at me. His eyes were bloodshot and he was crying. But not "I'm crying because it hurts," tears. It was more like, "My eyes are expelling a foreign object by producing extra water and the extra water just happens to be coming out of my eyes like unto tears. I'm not crying."

"Okay look at me. Now look to the left. No. Turn your head back toward me and move your eyes to the left. No. Wait, that is your left. I meant your right. My bad. Can you see? You don't look like you have anything in your eyes."

"I can't see!"

Got it. So, probably send him to the nurse's office. But I had to see how he would do walking down the hall first.

First, he tripped. Then he couldn't find the line. Then, apparently, "I can only see red and blue now!"

I had another student, Alberto, direct him down the hall to the nurse's office. Hopefully, I thought as I took the rest of my class up the stairs to our classroom, they would make it there alive. A minute after we got settled, Alberto returned and joined us for math.

Halfway through math, T.U. stumbled into the room and made his way clumsily to his cubby.

"What did she say?" I asked him

"She said to get my stuff."

"Are you getting checked out?"

"I don't know, all she said was to get my stuff. Can I have someone help me back downstairs?"

Yes, he did get someone to help him down the stairs and I guess he did get checked out because later, when we had an unscheduled fire drill, he didn't come out of the building, even though the nurse did.