A lot of us grumble and groan our way through fractions, geometry, and trigonometry. “We’ll never use this in real life,” we say.
Denise Wilson was heading home on the New York City subway earlier this month when she noticed a man seated across from her, looking over some math problems. She figured “he’s a math teacher or going over work,” but it turns out that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
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The man, later identified as Corey Simmons doesn’t use math for his own work, but he was so focused on the problems in front of him, that Denise’s guess was as good as any.
Then another man got on the train and sat down next to Corey. He explained to his seatmate that he was brushing up on his math skills so he could help his son, who was in the third grade and had recently failed a test on fractions.
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“I’m in my 40s and … I got to relearn this to teach my son because he failed a math test,”Denise overheard him tell the stranger.
Corey’s seatmate hasn’t yet been identified, but as fate would have it, he’s a former math teacher. So he spent the rest of the trip going over the problems and explaining the concepts to Corey, and “by the end of my train ride the guy in the red had a better understanding,” she wrote in an April 17 Facebook post.
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“I started tearing up … That warmed my heart and I snapped a picture,”she told CBS New York.
Others might have been too embarrassed to take up an offer for help, especially from a complete stranger. But Corey hadn’t done fractions himself in decades and gladly took up this kindhearted stranger’s gesture. “You need help sometimes and you shouldn’t wanna bite your tongue to not ask for the help. So don’t feel shy to ask someone for help. It’s okay,” he said.
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In a follow-up post shortly after the photo went viral, Denise wrote that she shared it to “shine light on” fathers who take active roles in their children’s lives because too often, “they go unnoticed … you’re more powerful than you may think you are.”
This is a wonderful example of a Good Samaritan stepping up to help. The best part, though, is that thanks to this man’s kindness, now that Corey understands fractions, it’ll make it that much easier for him to help his son grasp more complicated math concepts later on.
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