Danger!

As you guys know (I think), I'm a teacher. And while I'm justifiably coy about the name and location of my school, I take it enormously seriously. Not humorlessly. Just seriously.

This is what's pushed me towards my next badge: first aid. Once again, I'll be coy, but the subject I teach occasionally requires using sharp or hot tools and there's the potential for injury, no matter how careful I am (or how careful my students are). This isn't an issue of negligence, or of lack of safety precautions, anything like that. We wear gloves, goggles, masks, whatever's necessary. I've never had a serious injury in my classes, though at some of the schools I've taught in, I've broken up some fights. But you never know what's going to happen, and that's why I think it's time for me to, um, be prepared.

The more I've thought about it, the more convinced I've become that my next project ought to be the first aid badge. I just signed up for a Red Cross course, and in 2 weeks I will be first aid trained. Who thought the Handbook project would make me better at my job?

(Incidentally. Are other people as troubled as I am by the arrival of a movie starring the guy from Twilight that uses Sept. 11 as a twist ending? It probably says more about the age of the movie's likely audience -- for them, the WTC hardly existed except as something fated to fall -- but still.)