Tag Archives: accident

Days without scripts

One of my favourite quotes about school leadership comes from Gary, a VP that I had early in my career. He shared this with me after a typically crazy day at our middle school, “Being a Vice Principal is only a 3 to 4 hour a day job… the problem is that you get almost none of it done between 8:30am and 4pm.”

Yesterday afternoon was like that. The over-the-top moment came when someone driving out of the side street, across from our school parking lot, missed her turn, drove into our parking lot, and collided with 2 parked cars. Then she tried to leave the scene yelling that we had a picture of her license plate and no, we didn’t need to see her driver’s license or insurance. After she couldn’t get her car off the curb, she left on foot.

Fortunately that’s when the police arrived and she was apprehended. Speculating, based on how fast she was going, how far off of her intended direction she ended up, trying to leave the scene, and her irate behavior, I think she was was probably inebriated.

Just another normal day at school. No, I’m not saying bizarre parking lot accidents happen all the time, but rather the totally unexpected does. One minute you are working on a task and your day feels quite typical, and the next your entire day is turned upside down by an unexpected issue or event.

It’s the small part of your contract that this falls under: “Other duties as assigned.” Except these emergent issues aren’t really assigned as much as thrust upon you. It’s the leaky pipe sending water gushing down a wall. It’s the messy clean up during the hours in the day when you don’t have a custodian in the building. It’s the student missing from a class. It’s just about anything except the thing you thought you were going to do. Plans go out the window, you go off your planned script, and the issue in front of you builds a new agenda.

…and the days ends with you either staying later than you had hoped, taking work home with you, and/or moving things from today’s ‘To Do’ list to tomorrow’s.

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” ~Robert Burns

I didn’t ‘kneed’ this!

I wasn’t paying attention. I was at a friend’s house and took a shortcut off the front door path and across the driveway to my car, which was eye-level, 30 feet away from me. But it was dark and my friend’s driveway leads to a basement garage. What I thought was a 6 inch step to the driveway was actually a 4 foot drop. I don’t know if my right foot or my left knee hit the driveway first, but the pain was instant. I broke my patella (my left kneecap).

Careless? Yes. Unlucky? That depends, because it could have been my face. I literally took a step onto nothing and dropped 4 feet onto an asphalt driveway.

It’s almost 1am as I write this, in the emergency room, awaiting a tetanus shot. Tylenol 3’s tonight, and probably back to work on Wednesday… on crutches. I didn’t need this, but I’ll just thank my lucky stars it’s not worse.
https://youtu.be/byQrdnq7_H0