To this day, I still don't know why he continued to ride toward the school when he knew how cold it was the moment he left his house, but he did. By the time Jeremy arrived at the school, he said he couldn't even tell he was cold any more, he just felt sleepy and he had to pry his frozen fingers off of his handlebars.

Naturally, he ended up in the nurse's office as soon as he got there. She wrapped a coat around him and put his feet in a bucket of warm water. When she attempted to take his temperature, it wouldn't register on the thermometer, which only recorded body temperatures down to 90 degrees. After 10 or fifteen minutes, she was finally able to get it to show him at 90 degrees. This means that Jeremy was in the middle stages of hypothermia, and in all likelihood, another ten minutes outside would have been enough to seal his fate. Had his body temperature dropped much lower, the condition would have been almost impossible to reverse. Luckily, another hour or so later Jeremy was back to normal (for him). His mom came to pick him up, and after a quick visit to the ER just to make sure everything was ok (his legs showed signs of the onset of frostbite, but other than that there was no long-term damage), he spent the rest of the day at home with a blanket and a good book. Before he left, the math teacher, who had heard what Jeremy did and why, made a special trip to the nurse's office to inform him that he got a 99% on his quiz.

Submitted on 09/30/2006

Submitted by: Alex Bell
Reference: Personal Account, Feb. 2004

Copyright © 2006 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Yep, this one takes the old admonishment about how one's "poor" parents or grandparents had to "go to school in the middle of the winter with no clothes" to a whole new level! Wishing to attend school weather nonwithstanding is one thing, but wearing summer clothes on a 6.5 mile bike ride the day after a blizzard is plain crazy. In the end it's a good thing they didn't have to bury him with his math quiz! GREAT PA, Alex! I enjoyed it (it made me shiver just reading it)!

Fitzroy said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
This may be my favorite Personal Account of all that I've read in recent months. It made my fingers tingle, and it's not even cold in the room just now. Many thanks for the contribution.

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