Say cheese.
1 A happy Tuesday to yuz.
2 Crazy week.
3 Am I starting to see a pattern here?
4 Hmmm.
5 Nvm.
6 Anybody lookin'?
7 I promised I'd try to keep you posted on Heidi trips, so here's the latest. For the uninitiated, Heidi is purportedly a ghost who haunted the YB Theatre, the Theatre I ran at my former school, for years. She is considered real by many former students, colleagues, staff, and acquaintances. She is friendly, but moody, communicates through things like clicking chairs, temperature drops, electical coincidences, and sometimes uncanny coincidences, most often in early October, or during times of extreme stress. I often interact with her by musing things like, "So you think that was funny, ayyyy?" This is sometimes followed with a streelight going out, or a sighting of the numbers one or nine. Or the name "Heidi" enters the picture within a few seconds: a woman in a supermarket calling to her daughter, a restaurant called "Heidi's," an office request for a girl named Heidi, etc. She loves the Halloween season, and makes her presence known this time of the year. When this happens, it is commonly referred to as a "Heidi trip."
8 I knew going it that this was to be a crazy week. The PSAT test, usually given on a Saturday, was and is to be given during school hours this year.
9 It didn't do much outside of turning the entire school upside down, like everybody walking around is now standing on his or her head.
10 Add to that an exhausting weekend grading things at all hours and you see the set-up.
11 I killed myself the other night, staying up, emailing students and parents, and working beyond even my own exhaustion levels, but got it done.
12 Yesterday morning I looked around my living room and it was clean as a whistle.
13 Everything organized and ready to go. So here begins what I would say is a mild Heidi trip:
14 I hopped in my car and hit Capitol Expressway. I thought it might be nice to listen to KNBR sports radio. I wasn't in a musical mood. I just needed a little gab to get me down the road.
15 When I turned down Ruby, the road that leads to the school, I heard an airplane. I saw another wobbly one off to the west. I blinked for a second, then kept going. I squinted and ground my teeth waiting for that plane to land on top of my car, but it never did.
16 I looked down and saw that my car radio had a CD sticking out from last week. I had listened to some Bach after last Thursday's music concert. Seemed fitting. I thought nothing of it.
17 Just as the plane moved out of sight, the CD suddenly pulled into the player, shutting off the radio.
18 Do you ever yell at your computer, even though it is an inanimate object?
19 I did that. "No, no, no, no, NO!" I shouted. "I want to hear some sports' talk, not Bach right now!"
20 It didn't listen. It naturally crossed my mind that it might be Heidi, so I got mad at her.
21 "I don't want Bach, dammit!" I said.
22 I listened.
23 Nothing played. There was a blank screen on the digital face.
24 "Ha!" I thought. "Neener, neener, neener!"
25 I tested another CD and it worked. My player refused to play Bach, purportedly now for Heidi.
26 "So stop messin' with me dude," I thought. It felt like I was having a back-and-forth mini-fight with someone I knew.
27 I put on some Grateful Dead, but the first two songs were blues, a bit depressing. I wanted some dancing-bear music, just to cheer things up.
28 Around the fourth track, I heard the first few notes of the classic tune called Truckin'. Mainstream yes, but with good reason. AND right in my singing range. Sometimes I think Bobby Weir is my half-brother.
29 Sometimes the light's all shinin' on meeeeee...
30 Anybody lookin'?
31 I pulled into the school with the Dead blasting. Felt great.
32 I got into my classroom early, and turned on my computer.
33 <basketball buzzer>
34 It flickered, almost like crazy. It was like when you watch movies about ghosts and they disrupt a screen.
35 I opened my lesson with that. "I want you all to have a look." I had explained that Heidi might be mad, but only IF she exists, and of course, I refuse to believe in ghosts hashtag until a ghost appears and hands me a million dollars.
36 So far, no takers. And yes, I KNOW how to do hashtags. Stop interrupting.
37 I had hoped to use the computer to play a CD of the story I was going to teach, and now I had nothing.
38 I looked and saw my microphone and amp over in the corner of the room and plugged it all in. I would read the story, Heidi my good friend. Won't miss a beat. Another neener your way.
39 You know the amp is on when a little blue light goes on when you push the "on" button. I plugged in the amp. I turned on the power. No blue light. I looked at my class and said, "You guys are witnesses. Electrical. Not working."
40 A second later I thought, "This amp is one of those that has a plug-in cord in the back. Check that." Sure enough, I had forgotten that I had unplugged the back cord last week because I had no intention of delivering the story that way two weeks in a row.
41 I plugged it in, and the blue light came on. I looked at my crowd and said, "Okay, think we're in business! No ghost alert. My bad on this one!" Turned on the mic. I talked into it. "Test," I said.
42 No amplification, even though it was plugged in. I turned the volume all the way up. Nothing. I wiggled the cable. Nothing. I checked the connection between the end of the cord and the mic. Solid. No sound.
43 I decided to forget the amp and to read loudly. I refused to let electricity, or Heidi, or whatever get the best of me. It worked. The kids loved the story, and I had outdone whatever (or whoever!) tried to disrupt my lesson.
44 This worked for a few more periods. I think it was in my fifth period class, the one right before lunch, that another odd thing happened.
45 I did my same schtick; I told the story of the KNBR show and the Bach not working, followed by the laptop screen flickering and completely out of control.
46 I picked up my laptop and showed them. Some got a little scared, because it did look a bit ghostly, and seemed to be flickering angrily. It looked like a laptop fighting for its life.
47 Then something really weird happened. I set the laptop down and it reverted completely back to normal. The second I set it down. I set it down gently. And yet not even a flicker. The screen looked just like it does before I open it.
48 I put my hand gently under the laptop and showed the class that the problem was completely gone, in one second.
49 Strange.
50 The mic never did work. The night before I had spent a while trying to get the mic to get louder on a new Marshall amp and couldn't.
51 Was it all Heidi? Who knows.
52 Last night late I was left alone for the rest of the evening. I slept wonderfully, and well into this beautiful morning.
53 Nothing too strange today. All seems copacetic.
54 All's quiet this morning.
55 Think I'll have a little cuppa, launch this, and move up the road. Hope you enjoyed the small Heidi story. It's just one. There are thousands.
56 AnywayZ, have a great day.
57 See you again.
58 Peace.
~H~
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