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Heartwarming viral photo shows good Samaritan stepping in to help man struggling with math on subway
Image source: TheBlaze

Heartwarming viral photo shows good Samaritan stepping in to help man struggling with math on subway

A photo of a good Samaritan helping a man with math has gone viral for all the right reasons.

What are the details?

The picture, which a bystander snapped last week while riding a subway to Brooklyn, features the men’s moving interaction.

The bystander — Denise Wilson, according to her Facebook profile — later shared the image on Facebook. The post went viral, and has received over 122,000 likes and over 40,000 shares.

Wilson’s post reads, “So today omw from work the guy in the red sat down opend up his folder and started reading a few stops later the guy next to him sat down and asked him what he's studying you look a little confused maybe i can help he says his son failed a math test they're learning fractions so im just teaching myself this over again so i can help him im 42 & dont know any of this so im re teaching myself the guy in the black informed him he use to be a math teacher so he asked the guy to quiz him and everything he got wrong or was confused about he broke it down and corrected him by the end of my train ride the guy in the red had a better understanding he can bring home a new method and teach his child i really love seeing s*** like this especially in New York because we really just dont give a f*** about what the person next to us is going thru.”

Wilson spoke to WCBS-TV where she recounted her experience with the two men on the subway.

“He was just telling the guy, ‘I’m in my 40s and all of this is new to me, so I’ve got to re-learn this to teach my son because he failed a math test,’” Wilson told WCBS’s Ali Bauman.

According to Wilson, the father was struggling with fractions, and had just happened to come across the good Samaritan — who happened to be a former math teacher.

“When I say I started tearing up, that warmed my heart,” Wilson admitted. “So I snapped a picture.”

She added, “It was just one person helping another, and I thought that was beautiful.”

What did the dad say about math?

The father, identified by WCBS as Corey Simmons, said that he never did very well in math.

“It’s been about 30 years I’d say since I did fractions,” he admitted to Bauman.

He told her that when his son — a third-grader — began struggling with fractions, Simmons took it upon himself to learn for the sake of his child.

“It doesn’t matter if you fail, it’s what you do after you fail,” he told Bauman. 

Simmons’ lesson from it all?

“You need help sometimes and you shouldn’t want to bite your tongue to not ask for the help,” Simmons said. “So don’t feel shy to ask someone for help, it’s OK.”

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