I'll Give Him 99 Uses and a Crypt May Be One

You know how Hick always starts five more projects before he finishes the current one? Uh huh. I was sure you'd say, "Yes." Even though you don't live with him and see his obsession first-hand. Well...he's at it again. The Cardinals memorabilia mantel in his Little Barbershop of Horrors has scarcely had a chance to gather dust, and he's off with a most scathingly brilliant idea.

I was on my way home this evening when I got a text. I had The Pony read it for me. Val is not one of these over-the-center-line drivers who can't keep their hands off their phone in the car. Hick had discovered, at 4:00 p.m. when I was in a meeting, that one of our school buildings is for sale. I didn't see that text until 4:37, after the meeting. Val is not one of these I'm-so-important-that-I-can't-turn-off-my-phone teachers at the faculty meeting. I sent back a message that I was NOT interested in buying one of the school buildings. Jiminy Christmas! I'm retiring in slightly less than a year and three quarters, at which time I will have no desire to be the owner of a school building.

Hick was so excited that I could hear it in his text, read in a monotone by The Pony. "It's only $75,000, and I already have 100 ideas how to use it." Woe is me. That man of mine is almost too much to handle sometimes. Willie Shoemaker in his prime would have had difficulty reining in my Hick. As I dictated The Pony my reply, HIS phone rang.

"We're on the way home now! It's Dad. He says he has 100 and ONE ideas how to use the school."

"Let me talk to him. There's no way we're buying a school."

"Here. She wants to talk to you."

"I couldn't hear what she said. Val? VAL?"

"We are NOT buying the school. I don't care how much it is. We're not buying it."

"It's only $75,000!"

"That IS kind of cheap for a school. But no way am I going to get involved. You could please 99 people with your project, but then one would have a fit and make a stink because HE went to school there, the first one ever to graduate in his family, and that school should be preserved as a shrine. People don't want the building sold or torn down. They want it maintained. As a shrine to their glory days."

"But I know what we could do with it. It's already had new windows put in, and the asbestos removed. The kitchen downstairs, with the cafeteria, would be a great place for wedding receptions!"

"Nobody wants to have their wedding reception in an old school!"

"You'd be surprised. People have them in a lot nastier places than that!"

"I can't see it."

"And downstairs, where that friend of yours who sold the guns had his classroom...that would make three apartments down there."

"I'm not renting out rooms in my school. It might be worth the $75,000 just for the furnace and the fixtures and the scrap."

"Heck, I'd pay 'em $35,000 just for the gym. It has the kitchen and cafeteria, and all those lockers."

"You could probably sell the chairs in the gym for quite a bit."

"I know! And..."

"WAIT! We are NOT buying the school building. It's not worth the headache. People in the community don't want it sold."

"Well, that doesn't include the new part with the shop and the music rooms and the offices. They want a hundred-something thousand for that."

"Yeah, well. We're not buying any of it."

Oh yeah. It's not like we would buy the school and kick all the kids and teachers out. We're getting a new building. The ground has already been broken.

Sad thing is...I really think Hick was serious. But once I walk out the door and start my forever vacation, I am not interested in re-entering those hallowed halls of academia in any fashion. Not even as a landlady or party promoter.