Hairless Crispies
So last night was a huge night for The Geneva School. We had two really big events happening at the same time. First there was to be an open house for prospective parents (about 50 RSVPs), and the second event was the single biggest sports game the school has seen in their short history. The volleyball team, with a record of 20-5 was to host the school’s first ever regional game, in any sport (these geniuses need to do a few more push-ups and a little less reading in my opinion – the school’s 15 years old).
Anyway, I went about my business preparing the school for the festivities. I had to set up 50 chairs in the music room and pull out several display tables. Then I went to one of the kindergarten classrooms to set it up with chairs, etc. After that everything looked up to snuff so I ran shuttle for the teachers (we have parking problems and have to rotate teachers parking off sight, and I have to take them to their cars after school). I got back after shuttle to make one final pass through the school for the open house so that I could get ready to set up for the volleyball game.
BANG!!!! (There was an actual bang)
5:00 P.M. and all electricity (except for a few emergency lights throughout the building) was gone. Parents were going to start coming at 6:30 for tours, and the game was to start at 7:00.
People start freaking out and running all over the place. The lady running the open house and the headmaster and the miss-runs-da-place were all trying to think of and calling everybody from the school with any authority in the city.
Not knowing whether or not the game was going to go on or not I had to get the gym ready anyway. Therefore there was sweeping and moping in the gym that had 4 emergency lights. We set up the net and the chairs for the players. The other team and the refs showed up.
5:30 rolls around and we finally get off hold with the electric company. They send somebody over, and they started at the far end of the street (where they coincidently had electricity) checking all transformers and such. It’s about 6:00 or 6:30 and he finally comes over to our property (the doctors office beside us and the houses behind us are out too). He crawls up the pole, and realizes that he needs to call for backup.
Meanwhile, 3-4 of us are posted around the school to help people with parking and explain where they need to go – volleyball people need to stay outside in front of the gym, and prospective parents need to go find the ladies in the front of the school that are running the tours in the very dimly lit school.
The guy finally gets some back up from 3-4 other trucks that show up (can you tell we found somebody that had some pull?), and they start tearing things up. They pull out their saws and get rid of all the brush and find the culprit. ––– a squirrel!
It’s about 7:20, and the girls are in the gym (all the fans are standing outside in the dark) doing all their warm-ups with a few dinky lights to help them along. The electrician pulls off the squirrel and started splicing 4 ft. of copper wire. By this time the open house was in full swing, and everybody that was coming to the game was already there, so I stopped my parking duties and went to hang out with the electric army working on our transformer. Somebody said, “do you guys want the squirrel?” I said, “Heck yeah!” We got two ziploc bags, and they placed this hairless, black squirrel into the bag (they look like rats without their fur). We were in the clear at about 7:40 since the splicing only takes so long. So to tide everybody over I walked the bagged squirrel around to the fans with my flashlight to show them the culprit. At about 8:00 the lights turned back on, and a few of us sprinted around the school to make sure all the breakers and AC units were up and running. At about 8:15 the game officially starts.
We had about 50 people come to the Open house! We destroyed the other team, 3 games to 0! The squirrel is in the the science lab’s freezer awaiting a more entertaining experience!