One day my health teacher in middle school just like ⊠didnât show up for class. And so of course we were all âoh if he doesnât show up in fifteen minutes weâre legally allowed to leaveâ, giggling about it and all the bullshit. He did eventually show up, ten minutes into the class time. He looked haggard as fuck, sweating all over, hair messed up, beaten to hell and back. We stared at him and were about to ask what in the world happened to him when he stopped in front of his desk and smacked his bicycle helmet down on it.Â
His helmet had this odd discolored patch on it. Like, white against white, but ⊠weird? Itâs then that I realized his helmet didnât have a discolored patch, it had a patch missing. A big chunk of his helmet had just been shaved away, the curve of the helmet gone and sanded flat by whatever it had been scraped against. And running through that patch, from one side of the helmet to the other, was this big crack, like the whole helmet had split like an eggshell.Â
Our teacher took a couple deep panting breaths and then told our class:Â âAnd this,â he took another deep breath, âis why you always wear your helmetâ.Â
And thatâs the story of how an entire class of middle school students took helmet-wearing very seriously for the rest of their lives.Â