Do you smell burning?

Thursday was not a typical school day.  It was the last day before the break, so it was filled with children asking "What's the point of having school today?" and teachers who are thinking the same thing.  Of course, if there was no school on Thursday, everyone would just say the exact same thing on Wednesday and we'd have to make up the Thursday at a later date.

So basically, Thursday was supposed to be an easy day where everyone was just going through the motions and some families decide to pull their kids early for vacation. There was even a hour read-in scheduled at the end of the day! Sweet!

Of course, when do things ever go as planned? (Was Murphy divinely inspired when he wrote his law? It feels like the 11th commandment sometimes).

Unique Occurrence #1: After arriving at school, one of the art teachers dropped by to greet me. We talked until an announcement sang out over the P.A. requesting carolers in the front hallway. My colleague lit up like a Christmas tree.  "This is a lot of fun! You should come!" she said. I'm all for doing crazy and things and creating a positive atmosphere, but singing in front of large groups of people has never been my cup of tea. I walked out my classroom door with her, and shut the door behind me out of reflex. I don't know exactly what I was thinking at the time. I may have been planning on going to check my mailbox, or to visit someone else. I do know that as I stood there outside my door, I realized that my keys weren't in my pocket.

For the first time in four years, my keys were next to my laptop staring at me through a locked door.  Crap.

At that point, I figured God was kicking me out of the room and telling me to go sing.  Who was I to argue?  Random luck or divine intervention, if you find yourself in a strange situation, sometimes you just have to go with the flow and hope you'll get a story out of it.

There must have been more than twenty faculty on the front staircase. The choir teacher had pushed her piano out and passed out Santa hats and sheet music. I don't think I've caroled since 5th grade. Luckily, the songs were all the generic, easy tunes.  I also learned that Deck the Halls really does have a verse asking about figgy pudding as it's sang in the Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation Special! I almost started laughing mid song.

Unique Occurrence #2: Have you ever had a classroom full of 12 and 13 year olds break out into yelling/singing the 12 Days of Christmas? It's loud. Real loud! I was playing some Christmas tunes at the end of one of my classes and somehow (without any direction) all of the kids got the same memo and broke into song. I wonder if the choir room across the hall was confused when they heard all the singing and realized it wasn't from their room.

Unique Occurrence #3: I can now say I've unsuccessfully tried to start a fire in a school. When the lunch bell rang, I sat down on a couch in the room I use for learning seminar. I felt my eyes start to close, and my body started to sink into the couch. Immediately, I launched myself up. I knew that if I stayed on that couch, I was in danger of falling asleep. I put my lean pocket in the microwave, punched 2 minutes in and decided to walk around the corner to my classroom. My goal was to keep myself awake, kill two minutes, and grab the books I brought for the read-in so I could stash them in the right room.

Two things went wrong. First, I hit an extra zero on the microwave. My lean pocket was set to bake for 20:00 instead of 2:00. Second, I bumped into a friendly colleague. I was only gone for five minutes. Apparently, that's more than enough time to transform a pepperonni pizza hot pocket into a blackened and charred mess that pours forth smoke. I smelled the burning in my classroom. Teachers started poking their heads out their doors when they smelled burning. I rounded the corner back to the microwave room and saw several of my colleagues holding open a fire exit.

What was outside? I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with mean socket and meant that I wasn't going to be eating lunch anytime soon. Pretty damning evidence. My learning seminar room was filled with a slightly hazy air and smelled like burning popcorn. I'm fortunate that the fire alarms didn't go off. One of the teachers whose desk is assigned to the room, saw the microwave smoking with 15 minutes left to go and unplugged it before the hot pocket became an even hotter pocket. (Would it have burst into flames?  I can't help but wonder if the microwave pouch would've lit up like a Chinese New Year if given the opportunity).  Later, I bumped into a teacher who works upstairs who asked me if I knew what the burning smell was. In this case, smell traveled faster than blame, but I don't think that's always true.

The whole situation was one of those moments when you're incredibly embarrassed, but you know that it's going to be a great story later. It's a hilarious story right then if you're not the one to blame! If anyone asked what the smell was, I fessed up and told them that I couldn't work a microwave properly. My fifth period students got a big kick out of their teacher trying to burn down the school!  I figure if I'm always trying to get kids to fess up to their mistakes, it's only fair if I walk the walk myself.

Thankfully, the whole situation happened on a fair-weathered day and right before the school will have two weeks to air out.  I wonder if my colleagues will be making microwave jokes for the rest of the year...

Unique Occurrence #4: Several kids brought me Christmas gifts. I figured I'd drop them off in my car during my off period to expedite my escape for the holidays. I ended up helping unload a truck. At that point, I figured I'd already tried to burn down the school, so I should help do something to build it up. The building engineer was there and he couldn't stop smiling about the whole microwave meltdown.

That was the note I ended this year of work on. It's pretty funny, so I figured I'd pass it on here. I'd have written sooner, but that brings up Unique Occurrence #5: At 3:00, I saw I had a text from Carrie saying "I feel nauseous. Come home right away." By the time I'd gotten out to my car, she was over the toilet and I was on Shane duty and couldn't type. I haven't typed until now because Carrie (oh, how I love her) MADE me buy Portal 2 and was totally engrossed in it after Shane went to bed tonight. I love how my wife gets so into things! I played for a while myself before stopping to finally blog this.

On that note, I bid you all a good night!