Hopefully Not Deaf

Event this morning went very well.

Afterwards, as I was breaking down the AV equipment and such, the fire drill in the school rang.

The teacher had warned me about the fire drill in advance. But I had thought it was going to be one of those little fire drills that was over in 15 minutes, like the kind that we used to have in my high school.

So I was shocked when the fire drill turned out to be this humungous deal. Apparently it was more than a fire drill, but a “disaster evacuation drill”, and it was the first time the school had ever done it so everyone was taking it very, very seriously.

After standing outside for 15 minutes (with me worrying all the time that the sunlight was going to undo all my Clinique White Lab efforts this winter), the students were ALL walking to this other high school about one and a half mile away.

In the meanwhile, the whole school was in lockdown and no one was allowed to go back in, and the whole thing was going to take like an hour.

I was pretty irritated and dismayed by this point, because I did NOT feel like either walking to some high school 1.5 miles away or wait around in the blazing sun for people to come back from their nice little spring walk. Thankfully, about 20 minutes later, after the students have left, a school administrator walked by and happened to see me, and took pity on me and opened one of the school doors for me.

This was one of the schools that locks every single door except for one in the front, so their students can’t escape. In addition, all the doors have combination locks on them, and ordinary teachers don’t know the combination. In other words, it’s like a prison camp.

Weird because the school is in a very nice, very expensive part of New Jersey.

Anyway, after I went back inside, I realized why I did NOT want to be there. The fire alarm was still on, and it was the loudest, most excruciating and unpleasant screeching noise ever. I needed to hold my ears to not feel actual pain.

I ran to the bathroom and made some earplugs out of toilet paper. This dulled the noise somewhat and made it bearable.

Then I worked for another hour, with toilet papers in my ear.

I must really really love my job to do this and still feel good at the end of the day.

My ears are still ringing a little bit now. I hope I didn’t permanently damage them.