Running for freedom!!!

School rolled up this week for the first five days with a gaggle of high school kids/men/women/mothers/fathers and the ever present-missing school desks.

Every summer our staff, probably much like the staff of hundreds of schools across the state and country, spend their summers working to prepare the buildings and individual classrooms for the upcoming school year. They usually strip all the contents out of the rooms that touch the floor, take it into the hall, then go back in and re-wax floors or clean carpet. The rooms look good when their done. Then, they put the stuff back in the exact location it was in when they took it out, or close to it. Every year, when the teachers return, someone is missing something. Sometimes its personal gear like a radio or their favorite sweater. But most of the time its school furniture.

It is hard for me to imagine, and I have a vivid imagination, that anyone is stealing school desks to decorated their home.

I think this falls under the same category as the missing sock. You know the story. You do your laundry and throw a bunch of socks in the wash, then the dryer, then pull them out and start to match them; there is always one of them that has escaped --always. Where the hell did it go? Did it crack the door open when you were in the other room balancing your checkbook and jump out, running outside through the doggy door to freedom? Okay, so it did that, where did it go when it got to the yard? Florida? You want to disappear, everyone knows you go to Florida.

The theory is these desks, chairs, tables- all commercial grade education equipment, are finding their way to someones living room. You have an art table as a dining room table and a couple of student desks as end tables? Really?

I know our staff. Although they are way underpaid for what they do, they have pride. None of them, NONE, would want Mrs. Turk's table in their house. Nor would they want a desk, covered with years worth of gum stuck to the bottom. Nope, I think there is something even more sinister working here.

These things are possessed. Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy. But was it crazy when the Italians won at Gettysburg, or any crazier than Nero playing the tuba while Rome burned? I think not. These things have been slaves to man for a long time. I think they've just had enough. Somewhere in the Florida Keys, a table and a couple of desks have found new life as patio furniture at a margarita bar, slurping up all that spilled margarita mix and overhearing all those drunken conversations. It makes them laugh.

Yep, a margarita bar in the Keys.

Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all.