So I had the funniest day of my recent life yesterday.
I'm sitting in one of the many practice rooms adjacent to the band room at the school with Andrew and Claire. Kevin, however, was in the practice room next to ours practicing on the xylophone. Within each of the practice rooms in the well-worn, foam-esque ceiling tiles are large holes that were, at some point in the past, made by a mysterious force. In our room, slightly to the left of the space above my head, is a ceiling tile that had been moved over to one side, allowing access to the empty, attic-like space that all the practice rooms share.
So everyone in my room was bored. I was numbering measures in ED's music out of boredom, Andrew was reading, and Claire was chilling. The tiny guard room was filled with awkward silence for several minutes, until, suddenly, Andrew looked up from his book and muttered, "I'm gonna throw something at Kevin."
Claire and I smiled and Claire suggested some small, light object to be chucked through the ceiling. Andrew stands on his chair and gives it a toss. The projectile makes it through the hole in our ceiling, but thumps on the inside of the adjacent room's ceiling tiles. "Missed," I mumbled, not particularly interested in the pastime that has been the undisputed favorite of band students since the ceiling-holes were brought into existence (which was probably around twenty years ago or so).
In search of another projectile, Andrew looks up to the rack of color guard flags and finds a row of empty hangers. He grabs a hanger and Claire and I become a little more interested. Andrew flings the hanger and it bounces off the edge of our ceiling-hole and smacks me in the face. After a small burst of laughter from our group, Andrew picked the hanger back up, and mounted the chair for another attempt.
The hanger disappeared through the ceiling-hole and we heard a thump on the other side, and I assumed it was another miss...until, almost instantaneously with the landing-thump of the hanger, Kevin's xylophone notes stopped dead. Devious smiles appeared on the three pairs of lips in the guard room, and then came the familiar Southern drawl of our band director.
"Kevin, did you see that?!"
Kevin's high-pitched, hysterical laughter rose through the ceiling-hole in his room and into the guard room through ours.
The three pairs of eyes in the guard room widened. Andrew leaped down from the chair and spun to sit in it, grabbing his book. Claire stood up and began spinning a rifle as I began numbering measures again. After a few moments our band director (who, in his cooler moments, we call KoopDawg) enters the room with Kevin trailing behind. Kevin looked like he was about to burst into more laughter if he opened his mouth. KoopDawg stared at the hole in our ceiling.
"Is there anyone up there?"
We answered meekly, "No..."
"Doubt it-"
"No sir..."
KoopDawg pointed from the hanger rack to the hole in the ceiling. "One of those hangers...fell through the ceiling..."
The room was silent as we all sat and waited to get yelled at. All the evidence was on the table; we were sitting beneath a hole in the ceiling that quite obviously connected with the hole in the ceiling of the xylophone room, there was an entire rack of hangers directly above Andrew's head, there was no one more fun to prank than Kevin, and no group of kids looked guiltier than us.
The next words our director spoke shocked us to the core.
"Y'all, my wife works at the library and they had these homeless people hiding in their ceilings. They'd been stepping up on the bathroom sinks and climbing into the ceiling...I think there may be homeless people in our ceilings, walking around on the cinder blocks...I need to call somebody about that and see if they'll come check our ceilings..."
So he leaves and goes to his office to get on the phone.
Really?
Like, seriously?
I've been laughing for two solid days.
KoopDawg, we salute you and thank you for the entire class period of stifled, hysterical laughter.
Life is good.
"Laughter is the spice of life"
Peace out,
~W.V.~
No comments:
Post a Comment