Friday, February 24, 2006

His logic tree doesn't branch


Being the custodian in the same school that the my kids go to means that sometimes I have to deal with parental problems and professional problems at the same time. Case in point, when I went to switch shifts with the other custodian last week, he told me Eric had a problem down in the boys locker room. Seems he was cold so he was trying to warm himself by using the hand dryer. He must have hit it kind of hard because it started to smoke and they could see some flames in there. Well come to find out it seems that someone had thrown a few coins in there and when Eric hit it the machine it knocked the coins into the heating elements, so Eric was off the hook. But I had to explain to him that it is a hand dryer and not a body warmer. This highlights the problems that we have had trying to raise him. He is always cold in the wintertime and trying to warm himself. We have already had a talk with him about using the stove to warm up, he could burn himself or start a fire, etc. Now most people would take this little conversation and apply it to the hand warmer and go "Well if it is wrong to use a stove to warm myself, maybe the hand dryer isn't a good idea either." The problem is that Eric's Logic tree doesn't branch. He doesn't make that connection. This is why we get frustrated sometimes because we don't know if we have thought of every possibility of what not to do. I also think it explains the increasing number of gray hairs popping out of my skull.

No comments: