2 Acknowledge it is Wednesday.
3 How'd the week move so swiftly?
4 Probably the Man.
5 It's been a fun week, I tellya.
6 My students are presenting skits. We had a grand total of three yesterday as most groups weren't quite ready to go.
7 It's a livin'.
8 We had a fire drill yesterday. I have no idea why. There was no fire, nor was there any real explanation.
9 My guess is that some guy working on the fire alarms accidentally tripped one.
10 Or someone might have blown up a Twinkie in the science building.
11 It went for over twenty minutes, or so it seemed, and nary a fire truck.
12 My kids were all over it. I always love when there is a fire drill and they ask, "Is this a real drill?" Every drill is a real drill, foo.
13 I remember a few years back when they had so many fire-drill testing days that I ignored one after school. It was at YB, known for blasting after-school fire drills. That day I kept the students rehearsing and ignored it.
14 That's never a good idea. It is SO easy to assume it is a false alarm. They had been doing that time and again like the boy who cried wolf. I was younger and cockier and figured I knew everything.
15 I'm not anymore, not when it comes to safety. I was one of the last classes to return to the room yesterday. The rest of the school headed back to classes, but I waited for the "All clear."
16 Exciting times. We evacuate out to the baseball field, where I instruct my students to enter from the first-base dugout and go to home plate. Some of them just go home, because they conveniently don't hear the word plate.
17 "Are you scared it might be a real fire, Mr. H?" one student asked.
18 "Once we're out here, our only fear is stepping in dog crap. Watch for that, kids."
19
20 Old curmudgeon talking.
21
23
24 Gets cheap laughs.
25
26 Anybody lookin'?
27
28
29 Ah, life's good!
30 Moving On, Part One: Yesterday I was asked by my friend John to comment further about my crazy neighbor. He wanted a back story. Glad to oblige.
31 To begin, my neighbor hasn't been crazy the past two days. Quiet times over there. I can now read the paper.
32 Before this Christmas he was never like that. He is normally a regular guy who likes to go up "da Lake" (in this instance, Clear Lake) and fix up his cabin, then maybe do a little fishin'. He has a slight Chicagoan twang.
33 We can always tell what season it is by looking at his shoes. There are two seasons, in this guy's book. One season is where he wears a pair of sandals, and the other is where he wears a pair of beat-up comfort shoes.
34 He's a snappy dresser too. He wears a blue beat-up K-Mart mock Pendleton shirt on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and a red beat-up K-Mart mock Pendleton on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
35 If he catches you off guard, you will be in for a forty-five minute conversation involving rotting roofs, crusty pipe leaks, long trips up the Lake, and scandalous neighborhood happenings.
36 He's been retired for around thirty years, even though he's probably just a little older than I am.
37 He has always been a gossip. He's is and always has been the Gladys Kravitz of our neighborhood.
38 So no real history of danger in the guy, unless you regard getting bored to death a danger.
39 If you DO consider getting-bored-to death any sort of danger, you should stop reading this stuff.
40 It deadens the senses.
41 What set the guy off?
42 Right around the beginning of our Christmas, this RV parked right across from him, one house down from my place.
43 Suddenly, eight thousand people appeared and started having parties, and then wandering around like drunken moonrakers. It must have been like Night of the Living Dead to the guy. Bearded simpletons smoking joints and hoisting Bud Lites everywhere.
44 We were out of town those first few days, December 19-21, so I never saw it. Once I got back I was too busy throwing Christmas decorations over and around the house. I was happy to be away from school, so nothing bothered me.
45 So on Christmas morning the guy came out and yelled at Josh for rolling through the leaves he had raked right in front the car. When Josh pulled out, the guy went ballistic, screaming about not driving through the leaves, and how he was going to throw nails in them next time in hopes that he could pop their tires. He looked crazed, from my reports.
46 When I first heard this I went ballistic. "That a$$ho1e attacked MY guests?" I got loud, even loud enough for the guy to hear me. I didn't care. Josh was apologetic and classy, as always. I wasn't. I was ready to get into the guy's grill.
47 But that's just sweet lil' mellow ol' me.
48 I didn't know at the time about the RV. I did see that the next morning someone had put an orange "Move it or Lose it" sign on it. He may have called the city; I didn't care.
49 A day or so later I came home only to see him pushing his speedboat with his huge red pick-up truck. He was recklessly driving it around the corner, and WAY too fast. The guy was out of control. It kept jack-knifing like a rattlesnake.
50 I went around the corner to see where he was headed but he was gone.
51 So for the record, the guy has always been low key; this was just SO out there. I get vibes something personal happened to him, but that's the clarification John requested. I assumed from his question that one or two others out there in reader land might have been interested as well.
52 There's peace right now. I keep thinking that this sort of thing would work perfectly on Family Guy, which has been attacked lately for being a product of the Illuminati.
53 Seesly.
54 There are people out there much crazier than our friendly neighborhood weather vane.
55 It's 2015. You really don't need to go too far to find crazy.
56 Gottago. Hope this clears things up.
57 Have a GREAT Wednesday.
58 We'll see you again.
59 Peace.
~H~
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