judifilksign

Today, at work, they were hard at work re-roofing over our heads. "Rooferdancing," I called it.

But, as I was teaching, there was a large WHUMP! from above, and a small rain of plaster showered down on my head. As I was thinking "WTF?!?" and looking at my hands, several of my students shouted, and lunged towards me. I screamed and lept back, and the light fixture above my head finished falling at an angle towards my head. It hung at a jaunty angle, still lit.

My students were honing their inner Batman swing-in-on-the-rope-and-save-the-girl skills. They were all ready to push me out of the way and let the light fixture brain them instead. I think it was very sweet of all of them, really! (I mean, they could have just sat back and watched it brain me...)

I excused myself briefly and went up to the office. Our secretary (and everyone else) had heard the thump and my scream. My calm demeanor exiting my room soothed everyone, until I got to the office and my quiet, but very high-pitched insistance that maintenance come and EXPLAIN things to the guys overhead, and so DO something about the dangling fixture showed that I wasn't as with it and calm as I'd like to pretend I was.

Maintenance did come and re-attach the fixture so it wasn't an attractive nuisance hanging down (during class, meaning everyone was focused on him rather than their writing assignment, but that's what homework was designed to cure.) He also promised to have a talking-to to the guys on the roof about throwing down their materials. He'd taken out the bulbs, though, in case there was further problems with the wiring, and was checking in the ceiling at a later point after school. Naturally, the lights in front of my board.

I opened the blinds so we could see better, and all of the fix-it guys took turns smiling and waving at my students, who enjoyed smiling and waving back. More homework...

Well, at least we ended the day with every one happy!