‘What’s your emergency?’ 911 operator asked. ‘Homework,’ he said.
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Giggle if you must, but maybe you've never been overwhelmed by the trauma of learning math. Numbers, nothing but numbers that are all supposed to fit somewhere.
3/4 + 1/4? Some people still have bad dreams about equations.
So we fully understand what made a Lafayette, Ind., fifth-grader dial 911 in despair.
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“I had a really bad day and, I don’t know,” the boy told operator Antonia Bundy.
“You had a bad day at school?” Bundy asked.
“Yeah,” the boy said. “I just came to tell you that.”
Bundy asked: “What happened at school that made you have a bad day?”
“I just have tons of homework,” the boy said. “It’s so hard.”
Now, we all have opportunities to either show a little compassion and make a difference, or unload on someone. You get one shot at making the right choice. Bundy made the right call on the call, according to the Lafayette Journal & Courier.
This isn't the first time we've heard stories like this. In April, a 10-year-old called a Colorado 911 operator because he was flummoxed by division.
https://www.facebook.com/fortcollinspoliceservices/videos/600179773731736/
"Hi, this isn't an emergency but I'm 10 years old and I'm working on my math homework right now and I can't figure out what 71 divided by 3,052 is," the boy told the operator, who realized he had reversed the numbers.
A police spokesperson said the operator helped him solve the problem, then gave him some advice on when to call 911, mindful that police teach children to seek out the police when they need help.
“Sometimes, as in this case, they feel like people might just need a little bit of compassion in the day," she said.