NYC Subway Ride Turns Into Math Lesson For Two Strangers

NEW YORK, NY — Corey Simmons wanted to help his son with his math homework, but it had been so long since he'd done fractions that he didn't know where to start. Thankfully he got some help from a fellow straphanger on the subway last month in a scene that later went viral on Facebook.

Simmons, 40, was looking over his son's third-grade math assignment on the Q train when a scholarly looking man got on, he told the Washington Post. Simmons' son had just failed a test and he wanted to give him a hand, but he needed some help himself, so he tried to get the man's attention.

"I said, my son failed his test; I haven’t done fractions in a long time," Simmons told the Post, which reported his story Thursday.

The man talked Simmons talk through the assignment over the course of the 20-minute ride, according to the Post.

Denise Wilson happened to be sitting across from them and snapped a photo that she posted to Facebook on April 17. It's been shared nearly 41,000 times and gotten 124,000 likes.

"(B)y 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," Wilson wrote on Facebook.

Simmons and Wilson reportedly still haven't found the man who gave the impromptu math lesson. But Simmons' son recently retook the quiz he had failed, according to the Post.

"He’s going to knock it out of the park," Simmons told the paper.

Read the full Washington Post story here.

(Lead image: Photo by Maria Cormack-Pitts/Patch)