Our Fire Shirts, Circa May 2017 #welcometokindergarten

2 years and 5 days ago, I found myself in the back of an ambulance headed to the local hospital after I went out of town to assist a good friend at her bridal appointment on a Saturday. I wore a neck brace and had no vision, with my good eye basically sealed shut with the amount of blood that had run over it and my glasses lost somewhere on the floor of my car. (My eyesight is so seriously one-sided, the eye doctor ran the test three times when I first got glasses because it was too strange.) 4 hours later, I walked out of that hospital without any fractured or broken bones or a concussion.

That night, back at my house, I fretted about the following week - a first year teacher who had just missed two days due to sickness the week before, about to begin EOY testing, with field day on Tuesday, and an assistant who would be absent after a loss in her family who's funeral I had attended just the day before. One of my biggest worries though was the ruining of my Saturday night plans - three friends who had agreed to come help me tie-dye 22 shirts to wear on Tuesday at school.

On Sunday, my mom came to just be my mom with me, and I had a friend who had never tie-dyed a thing graciously agree to sit on my garbage-bag-covered kitchen floor for hours and help me, so that three days after my car accident, my class could have cool shirts on the field like all the other classes.

I don't remember much about the half day I spent at field day that year. But I do remember these shirts, and how much they liked them. They'll always have a bigger meaning to me than they seem.

We wore these shirts three times in the two weeks that followed.

   

P.S. I'm two years accident-free, and it feels good! It felt important to mention. (I have, however, hit a tree twice, but both times were in my parents' driveway.)