Say cheese.
1 Fast week.
2 I think I have identified the Rooster Man, the guy who does some sort of Janov rooster crow three times a day.
3 He lives just over the fence in a yellow house.
4 Each morning, REALLY early I hear him cockadoodling. He lives in a yellow house. It seems hollow. His voice echoes loudly on starry October mornings.
5 Let's talk say 6:30 or 7 a.m.
6 That's often right when I am editing this goofball stuff.
7 Yeah I know, I know. You think this is easy.
8 It's only easy when the network crashes right at the end of the evening.
9 Anyway, I think I have discovered the guy's secret identity. He is this white guy who looks like he just went through the wash with a dozen yellow shirts. Gaunt, thin, and jaundiced, he has what seems like straw hair. I caught him standing out in front of his yellow house when I turned the corner yesterday morning. Wrinkled T-shirt. Corduroy pants, tainted yellow. I thought to myself, "That's Rooster Man! No way it isn't!" I felt juvenile, triumphant, like I had just finished reading a Don Freeman book.
10 I had reason to celebrate.I spent yesterday morning blasting some rock 'n' roll through my ear buds so I wouldn't have to listen to that guy.
11 It eventually ceased. The cockadoodling, that is. When I left for work, I turned the corner and saw this guy. He looked as though he not only went through the wash, but that he had just finished off a tall box of Rice Krispies.
12 And yesterday I was ALL organized. I over-compensated for all the six thousand things that could go wrong at school. I ran a little late, but that was because when I tried to send this stuff off, I got all sorts of buffering and nonsense happening on my laptop.
13 I pushed all the right buttons, but it just didn't behave.
14 Oh well.
15 Once I got past Rooster Man, I got caught in some light traffic. That's usually when I goof on people. Yesterday was a perfect day for it.
16 I swear. We ALL do it, but still. This gal pulled up next to me. I honestly didn't want to, but curiosity and boredom got the best of me, so I glanced over. Here is what I saw:
17 You know how there is a cliche about wimminz who
looked like they stuck their fingers in a light socket?
18 This gal's hair didn't look like that at all. Sorry to disappoint.
19 Her hair instead looked like the electrician had gone to lunch while all the wires still hung out of the wall.
20 Only with mousse. It was shaped like various pipe cleaners, each shaped into question marks. With mousse.
21 Not a good look.
22 It's that soaked curly look. I can't explain it, but it is some sort of trend right now. It didn't become her.
23 I'm pretty sure she wore army boots.
24 When I was a kid, and when I would get into a shouting match with another kid, one of us would inevitably say to the other, "Ah, yer mudda wears ahmy boots!"
25 Now it's fashionable for moms to do that.
26 Anyway, the Rooster Man started it all, and then that happened. The lady with the curl.
27 I didn't care. I knew I was organized and prepared. I bopped down the road and pulled into the school on time.
28 I had spent the previous evening re-organizing my bags and all.
29 When I opened the car door to get my bag, it had taken a header in the back seat.
30 Really?
31 I sighed, figured you can't fight things, especially in October.
32 My theory is that the spirits get WAY active during October, because everyone is all about Halloween and all.
33 Just a theory mind you. I will re-iterate that until a ghost walks up to me in front of people and hands me a million dollars, I am going to assume all this stuff is coincidental.
34 Then what's up with the theory, you ask?
35 Iono.
36 <goofy smirk>
37 After that, I managed to get the day started once again with a huge ALLLO!!! It elicits some smiles and it is pretty disarming.
38 Everything went pretty smoothly.
39 No fancy coincidences, no birds crashing into windows, or landing on heads or anything.
40 For the record, no bird every landed on my head.
41 There was a time a few years back when I was doing Activities, and was working late at the school, sometime during this season.
42 I was at my computer working stuff out when I heard a flutter.
43 I looked up, and sitting on top of the teevee in the office was a medium-sized ebony bird. It kept cranking its head, like a pterodactyl with a a herky-jerky neck condition. I kept looking and it kept staring and moving its bird head.
44 It never spoke, but if it did, I think it would have said this:
45 "Caw!"
46 Anybody lookin'?
47 AnywayZ
48 The bell for the next class sounded, and before I knew it I was preparing them for a reading of The Raven. I explained a few things, and then said, "Amazingly, nothing weird has happened today."
49 At that exact moment some guy's phone went off, playing some other-worldly music, REALLY creepy stuff. At first I thought he had pranked me, but my comment was so random it wouldn't have worked that precisely.
50 I pulled him over after class and asked if he had planned it, and he just laughed and said, "No, that actually went off. I have no explanation!"
51 Another guy's phone had gone off right after his, but it was all a bit too much for me to consider seriously.
52 I am convinced that the first guy was telling the truth.
53 Regardless, it was a great moment. I was practically celebrating the lack of oddities and Heidi trips yesterday.
54 I have a list I have tried to keep this week, and it is filled with all sorts of crazy coincidences. I may try to add them all up by Monday, just to see where everything has gone.
55 The ghost stories of the students will be Tuesday in the Theater, and the classic Heidi stories will be on Halloween, all day. I may try to see if the office can let guests on campus, but it is also Homecoming week, so they might not allow it. I'll try to see. If you are interested, email me at harringtonb9999@gmail.com.
56 OH! We did have one other oddity yesterday. I also taught the lovely Annabel Lee, and handed out copies to each student. One girl said, "Mr. Harrington, I didn't get a copy of Annabel Lee. I got Vocabulary 9."
57 We are on Vocabulary 6 this week. I had originally run forty copies at home but couldn't find them when I got to school because my bag had taken a header. I had a folder from last year in my school files, and evidently some Vocabulary 9 copies had found their ways into that folder.
58 Ones and Nines. Always a part of the festivities.
59 There was just a commercial on Channel 2 News about Proposition 19. That's the marijuana initiative that failed to pass in 2010. Not important, but it just happened to be on right when I wrote about the Vocabulary 9 copies.
60 And so it goes.
61 Time to head out to Wednesday.
62 Have a GREAT day. See you again.
63 Peace.
~H~
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