5 minutes.
A few days ago, my friend told me about a writing prompt he loved writing to when he was in college. His professor assigned him and his class to write a story about the 5 most important minutes of their lives. I love this prompt because it makes you think intently about all the time you’ve spent on earth. It should also encourage you to think about the way you spend your time as you get older.
I found it challenging to identify the 5 most imporant minutes in my life. Initially, I wanted to isolate the 5 worst minutes of my life. I’m not sure why I correlate most imporant with worst but I did. Then, I reframed it. Rather than thinking about the worst 5 minutes of my life, I decided to try to isolate the 5 minutes that helped me become who I am today.
Here’s what I wrote:
It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college when my dad suggested I become a Certified Nursing Assistant. A CNA is someone who assists nurses with patient care. I wasn’t interested in nursing nor was I crazy about going to school in the summer. I did, however, have an interest in pleasing my dad, so I agreed to go.
My dad was adamant that, if I ever wanted to one day assume leadership at his company, I’d have to earn my stripes first. Since taking care of old people is the core of his business, it made a lot of sense for me to understand what it took to do that.
So, I enrolled in the class at the community college downtown. Since it was summertime, I was living at my parent’s house in the suburbs about 30 minutes outside the city. I had a car so this wasn’t a problem for me.
The night before the first day of class, I decided to see how long the class was going to take. I learned the duration of the class was 2 months - from the beginning of June until the end of July.
After those two months and a final exam, I’d be a CNA and allowed to work as one.
The first month of the class was to be spent in a classroom on campus where we’d study from books and take written exams. The second month of the class was to be spent in a Veterans Affairs hospital about 20 minutes away from campus.
Although I didn’t love the idea of spending all summer studying how to take care of old people, I held on to the belief that it’d pay off in the long run. As long as I showed up to class and did what needed to be done, I had my leverage.
When I showed up to the first day of class, I got lost trying to find the correct classroom, and therefore was one of the last people to enter. The class was supposed to begin promptly at 8am. I walked in at like 8:03am.
As I looked for a seat, I scanned the rest of the class and was surprised that I was the only white kid in class.
I found a seat in the back.
When I bent into my seat, I looked to my left and noticed I’d found a seat next to a man who seemed to be the oldest in the room. He looked over at me, flashed a smile, then looked back to the teacher in front.
I later learned that his name was Tom.
I sat next to Tom that day and every day after that. For some reason, during the course of the first month, we were required to move to a different class room. When we moved classrooms, I sat next to Tom again.
Over time, after witnessing several immature outbursts from our classmates, Tom and I found comfort one another. We felt as if we were the only normal people in the class. We weren’t yet friends. But in a class where it seemed like everyone else was prone to random meltdowns, if we were ever going to find a friend in class, we knew it’d be with one another.
As the days passed, we got to know each other better.
On our breaks, Tom and I would chat a bit before we’d go our separate ways. When we’d reconvene, we’d ask each other what the other did while on break.
Tom usually met up with his wife who was inconveniently placed in a different CNA class down the hall. They would generally sit together and eat the bagged lunches brought from home.
As our final week in the classroom came to a close, the teacher discussed the game plan for our upcoming first day at the Veterans Affairs hospital.
Our teacher was thorough with her explanation and expectations of us. She was long and deliberate and sometimes treated us like children when she explained things but it was only for our own good. It seemed her love for teaching matched her love for nursing. And as appreciated as her care for us was, it could feel like overkill when she’d explain things.
She never failed to make herself clear, though. And if anything was clear after listening to her instructions about the upcoming month at the VA Hospital, it was that no student was permitted to be late.
The course curriculum specifically required a certain number of hours and allowing students to be late - in effect missing hours - was out of the question.
It was set. Come the following week, we’d spend the month at the VA Hospital together and we’d arrive promptly at 7am. No exceptions.
After the lecture on what was to happen the following Monday, our teacher let us break for lunch.
As I was walking out of the classroom, I overheard my friend Tom approach our teacher.
I couldn’t hear what they were talking about so I left.
When I returned, as best I can remember, I overheard Tom and our teacher talking about the city bus schedule.
The two of them spent the lunch hour devising a plan to get Tom from his house to the VA Hospital by 7am.
Tom, I learned a few weeks into class, was originally from Nairobi. When we met, Tom had only lived in the U.S. for a short while. He’d taken public transportation to campus every day because he’d yet to save enough money for a car. And since he didn’t have a car, it meant he was going to have to take the bus to our new class location, 20 minutes beyond the campus where we’d already spent the first month of class.
This was the problem:
The bus schedule was set up in such a way that he would’ve had to get on the bus at 4am to make it to the hospital on time. And since no accommodations could be made, it seemed that Tom only had 2 options:
Take the bus at 4am.
Or
Forfeit the first month of classwork he’d already completed and re-enroll in another CNA class more conducive to his situation.
After I overheard this, I decided to interject.
“Tom, what if I picked you up and drove you to class?”
My classmates looked at me as if I’d just offered my first born as a sacrifice.
After Tom politely declined my offer the way I knew he would, I plead further. I made it clear that I’d be happy to do it and that it’d be difficult for me to go on knowing he’d have to start all over again. Selfishly, I didn’t want to be in that class without Tom anyway.
I don’t recall how I finally persuaded him to say yes but he did.
From there forth, Tom and I shared a car ride every day for a month. I picked him up in the morning then I dropped him off in the afternoon.
Tom shared all about his young life growing up in Africa. He told me about all the fun times he’d had and the mistakes he’d made along the way. He shared about loves lost and how important it is to move on from things when you know it’s time. He shared everything he knew about life. And I listened to all the things I’d yet to learn myself.
There we were, two men of different backgrounds, race, age and color, just talking about our lives.
I can’t remember anything I learned in that CNA class nor do I do that work anymore.
I remember Tom though.
And the laughs we shared along the way.
