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November 15, 2011
Authorized Personnel Only
A mess. An organized mess. A constantly growing organized mess. This is what I deal with every morning. What do I need today? A light bulb. Go into the far corner, past the dusty desk with its faded green chair; past the row of windows that are so old you cannot see beyond their yellow tint; beside the shelves with more rusty nails than Tim the Tool-man Tailor from Home Improvement could ever decide what to do with. There, where the light barely shines, is where you can find the spare florescent lights.
Of course, simply locating them isn’t enough. No, you must first move the army of dead vacuums, whose rank grows almost weekly (they remind me of those 6,000 Chinese terra-cotta soldiers … but I hope there are never that many). Inevitably upon moving them, you create a dust cloud so large that your eyes burn and your nose tingles. Your body is immobilized by a storm of sneezes that leaves your head pounding. What this place needs is a good dusting – or un-dusting as Amelia Bedelia would say. But your sneezes have brought about a new danger: Richard and Anthony, the two college maintenance men who are more gregarious than anyone. You hear them first, as you blindly reach out your hand to clumsily grasp at the box of florescent tubes, but, quicker than you can say, “lickety split,” you are engaged in a 20-minute conversation about the nature of shower heads, why they break, and what is the best way to fix them. Whatever happens, don’t bolt.
Eventually Richard and Anthony wish you a good day – a good sign – and clutching your precious, illuminating cargo and retrace your steps. Just as you reach the door a strange noise, not unlike someone gargling marbles, reaches your ears… the bell over the intercom. Responsibilities time is over.
This experience is not a figment of imagination or a scene out of the Twilight Zone; this is the one and only maintenance room at Mater Ecclesiae College. Maybe the door reads “Authorized Personnel Only” for a reason.
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