I sliced my finger with my Stanley knife while trying to cut up a piece of Contact to stick a merit sticker into a kid’s book. The blade slipped on a bump in the ruler and very nicely slipped up the ruler and over two of my fingers, cutting a small chunk right off the middle finger, a corner of the nail from the index finger, before cutting through the finger itself. I grabbed the finger and ran into the lab tech’s office to get something for it. ‘You got any Steri-Strips?’ I asked. She was frantic because first-aid wasn’t her thing and she had no idea what a Steri-Strip was. She was so anxious and jittery and worked up it was funny. Blood was dripping everywhere and I was like: ‘That. I’ll take that’. ‘That’ turned out to be a massive wadding which I wrapped around my finger while rummaging through the box looking for something more appropriate. There was nothing. Saline wash, slings, band-aids, alcohol wipes, sanitary pads… that was it.
So I went out of my room, through the double doors, down the two flights of stairs, through the other set of double doors, outside, across the yard, through the set of double doors, down the hall, through the other set of double doors, down another corridor, through another set of double doors, down the stairs, and asked someone if they could take me to their first-aid room. ‘Why?! What’s happened?!’ I’m like, ‘I just want to check out what you’ve got, like if you’ve got some Steri-Strips or something’. So they take me to the first aid room. Which was a closet with a bed in it and some boxes. It didn’t look like anyone had every been in there except to put things into storage. The lady’s anxious as well, and moves some boxes aside and pulls out a box from under the bed. From that box, she’s pulling out more boxes to see what’s in them: alcohol wipes, sanitary pads… another box of sanitary pads… band-aids… alcohol wipes… more alcohol wipes… more alcohol wipes… band-aids… sanitary pads… and on it went. I’m go ‘Um… I don’t think you’ve got any Steri-Strips. If you find something I could wrap this up with could you let me know?’.
Anyway. I go back to my room and rummage through the first-aid box again, finding a bit of gauze, which I used. The lab-tech is very keen to help, but was embarrassed that they had no plaster to wrap the gauze around the finger with. So she goes ‘oh! I’ll get some tape!’ and runs off and comes back with a roll of Scotch tape which probably hasn’t seen the light of day in who-knows-how-long. I’m standing there with this bit of gauze around my finger and she’s trying desperately to find the end bit of the tape. She finds it, and tries to peel it off, only to have a little tiny bit peel of but the other bit’s stuck fast. After a while, there’s a small pile of little tiny triangles of Scotch tape on my desk. There’s still blood dripping all over the place – keep in mind, two of my students that very week had had blood noses in my classroom and there’s already heaps of blood splattered on my classroom floor which hasn’t been cleaned up yet because the cleaners only sweep, they don’t mop – Melissa the labby is getting more frantic and anxious, and I’m trying not to laugh at the hilarity of the situation. In the end, I found an eye-patch in the box with an attached bandage which would ordinarily wrap around the person’s head. So I just used that instead.
Meanwhile, there’s a toilet under the stairs in front of my room. It’s kept locked and the art teacher has the only remaining key to that toilet. Because her room is next to the toilet, it’s pretty easy to just walk in, grab the key, use the loo, lock the door, leave the key and head back. Anyway. I’d used the last of the loo paper a couple of days before and was surprised to see that two days later, the paper hadn’t been replaced yet. So I mentioned something to her at lunch, and she’s like, ‘oh yes I must get more toilet paper when I go to the shops’ and I’m like ‘what?!’ So she tells me: ‘We have to supply our own toilet paper’. Apparently, it’s that, or we can use the loo in the staffroom. Go back and read my description about how I got to the reception before. Then add to that, walk across reception, go through another double door, go around the corner, through another double door, up two flights of stairs, through a double door, round the corner, through another set of double doors, down the corridor and through a coded door. That’s the staffroom.
The school’s so completely fucked up that nothing actually happens and nothing gets done about it – there were live wires sticking out of one of my benches (I had to get the guys to switch off the power to that bench from the main); there’s a big sign above my door that says ‘fire exit’ but there’s no door handle on the door – you have to stick your finger through the hole that they drill there for the handle bit and try to pull the door open without getting splinters in your finger but the door’s got one of those self-closing boxes at the top that makes it extra hard to open; the kids don’t even bring a school bag to school; there’s practically no workable stationery, and clearly, the only things they need to worry about in terms of first-aid was disinfecting things and periods. If I didn’t laugh I’d cry.
I must add that the teachers are good. They work so hard to pull the place together. But they’re all so tired… I’d rather not end it on a bad note though. I do enjoy teaching. I don’t like the crap that goes with it, but I do like my job. Look at this: one of my year 10 boys brought a caterpillar into class. And it was so odd, they were all so into it. Not as in wanting to squash it or anything. A part of me thinks that they thought they could freak me out with it or something but obviously it didn’t work, so they just ended up taking it turns to have it on their arm during the lesson. Halfway through they got sick of it and took it outside. But they knew I carried a camera on me all the time so they asked me to take a photo of him. It. They did give it a name, but I forgot what it was.
1 comment:
I know you've already told me the cut story but it still makes me raise eyebrows and go "WTF!?!?"
and the catapiller is cute... how the hell do you spell that bloody word?
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