Val Goes Around Her Elbow To Get To Her Thumb, Only to Find It Severed

What does a teacher do on her last day at school? Take pictures, of course!

You might think a teacher would take pictures of her students who might be graduating. Or pictures of her students who are moving on to another building. Or pictures of her students who are progressing on to the next course. Or pictures of her colleagues who might be retiring or jumping ship. Or just feel-good pictures with her bestest buddies, for the good times.

You'd be wrong.

A teacher takes pictures of her electronic hookup configurations, because she never knows when the technology department will get to her room next August. It might be early, the first week of the month, so everything is good to go for her work days and open house. Or it might be the morning of the first day of school, requiring her to go to Plan B for the 100 new students who will be flooding into her classroom that day.

Yes, you live and learn. As crazy as it sounds, Mrs. Thevictorian is not at the top of the tech chain! Can you believe that other people's problems might take priority over the hookup of Val's electronic accouterments?

So there I was, my contractual obligations to the district fulfilled, gathering up my laptop to shelter at home over the free-for-all of summer school and building cleansing, on Friday morning after dropping off The Pony for his tutoring duties. I taped a diagram of my classroom furniture configuration on the corner of my hand-me-down desk. Once upon a time, the custodial staff asked for such a map. Because, you see, some years we returned to find furniture that wasn't even ours! We had to mount several expeditions, most of them clandestine, to reclaim our rightful belongings. And even if you had your own, it was kind of like looking into the mirror and seeing that you now had one eyebrow in its proper place above your peeper, and the other across your top lip, with your nose situated where Picasso might have found it aesthetically pleasing.

"You know, Val," I thought to myself, "you might want to sketch out the wire configurations on the back of your electronic accouterments. That way, you can get them all hooked up the morning your return, and you won't have to fret during your very last catered breakfast."

Heh, heh. Silly old Val! As she moved her cell phone out of the way to swing the tabletop printer around for an artist's rendering, she stopped still as a statue. Still as a freshman whose phone has just gone off in class. That happens when Val concentrates all of her energy on a single concept. "WAIT! I can take a picture of the connections with my cell phone! Then I can email them to myself. Then I can email them to my school account so I can have them ready next year as I'm hooking things up! I'm a freakin' genius!"

You see, Val tries to maintain separation of school and home. She does not check her personal email at work. She could not email them directly to her school account at this juncture, because the email account is being switched over to another email provider, of which Val is not exactly sure of the address, and the current one may or may not lose information during the transfer. Besides, the current email has just slightly less letters in the address than the longest town name in Iceland. Thus the convoluted steps in her plan.

I fired up my phone and commenced to snapping. Here's a little sample from my gallery:

Why yes, they DO progress from simple to complex! As you can imagine, Val would be at a loss without her photographic diagrams. This is not the Age of Genius, when he would stride into the room, work his magic like one of those creepy cup-stacking-champion kids, and hold out his palm to collect $20. No, this is the Age of Val and The Pony. Last year, we got lucky. And by we, I mean mostly The Pony, who shoved wires here and there until they fit, while I tried to turn things on until they worked. We were stymied by why the phone needs to be plugged into the laptop dock, but it all worked out.

But here's the problem with my geniatic plan. As your remember, because I'm sure you were reading closely, hanging onto every word, I was going to take the photos, email them to my personal account, email them to my school account, and look at them on my school laptop screen while I hooked things up. Does anyone see a problem with this plan?

I CAN'T LOOK AT THEM ON MY LAPTOP UNTIL MY LAPTOP IS HOOKED UP!

I guess I'll just take my phone, and hope the lens doesn't fall out of my glasses while I'm squinting to see where the wires go.