In which I burn down a room

I have super powers.

I can make things happen, or foresee them happening.  Or something.

Basically, I think things, and then they take place not too long later.

I'm like Ms Cleo or something!!!

In the past few years, I have seen a miscarriage, some break ups, more than four pregnancies, and more occur after I think about them or have visions about them, or something.

Just this school year, I think I made the L train stop working.

The day prior, I was talking to some colleagues about how I missed our Post-Sandy cab rides together since I don't really see them during the day.

The next morning the trains did not work and we all had to take a cab to school.

Today may have been the biggest, most dangerous, most shocking vision, make-it-happen event of them all.

Right before lunch, I had two students come into my room to ask if they could leave their belongings in the room since they had my class right after lunch.

I was rolling my eyes hella hard at them.

So hard that they asked why I was rolling my eyes.  "I'm not rolling my eyes, I'm just looking at the wires and pipes up on the ceiling.  I'm thinking of the Shirtwaist fire lesson we had a week ago and how all of these wires and fire gadgets are kind of a result of that fire.  I'm wondering how they would really work in a fire in our school."

Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle.

I let them leave their stuff in the room, and go off to lunch.

Less than twenty minutes into lunch the intercom goes on and the fire alarm goes off.  At first the teachers in the teacher lunch room think it is a drill.  Then we realize that no one in their right mind would call a fire drill during lunch time.

It was a real fire.

I didn't make a train stop or a friend have a baby.  I made a fire start in the school building!

We all rush outside.  I only had my lunch bag (chicken soup) and my $12 mug I had bought this morning and refilled thrice with peppermint tea (before 10 am) to ease my laryngitis.

We are outside.

Five fire trucks are outside.  Firepeople are pulling hoses into the front of the school.  They are taking in tools that look like chisels.  Returning outside to put on what look like oxygen tanks.

Another fire truck pulls up.

They are all inside and not really coming out for long.

We stay outside the school for about an hour.

I am freezing my sick ass off in my thin sweater and tights, though trying not to look too cold in front of the kids who are also jacketless so that they won't complain too much about being cold.  At this point I am realizing that we may not get back into the school.  I don't have anything I need on me - subway card, wallet, cell phone, keys to my place, laptop, coat.

I just want to be able to go in and get those things and for the kids to be able to get coats and their belongings.

Instead of that happening, we are finally sent to the nearest school.  There are three schools in my school's building and we are all shipped to another school's auditorium.

Let the madness begin.

We are by far the most well behaved school of the three, and this afternoon proved that.  I honestly could not even tell the teachers from the students at the other schools.  Not because they were young, but also because they all dress so casually.  There were no teachers from the other schools trying to make sure their students were behaving, sitting down, or just in the areas they were designated.  When I did see teachers address misbehaving students from those schools, it was the teacher quietly telling the kid what s/he should be doing three times and then walking away with the students still not having followed any of the directions.

Madness.

The school we were in was still in session.  They only had two bathrooms our three schools were allowed to use.  My school has at least 300 students.  Half of them just finished lunch and needed to wee.  I had just finished my fourth tea and needed to wee.  On a side note, when I finally did, I set a personal record for my longest pee - 24 seconds.

We started having the high school students call their parents to let them leave from our safe site.  Many of them made successful calls and were leaving.  Then we got word from the network that we were not to let any students leave.  Thanks for that late message.  Now we had a ton of kids angry that some of their friends got to leave and they can't.  We had parents pick their student up and get angry at the staff that their kid was leaving without a coat.  Yes, your kid is safe and made it out of a fire.  You are welcome.

Trying to make it one trip

I say we had them do this, but all the while, I cannot talk louder than a whisper.  I am normally a person with a pretty booming voice when I put my mind to it.  I have been able to communicate with people across packed arenas and they can recognize my voice out of the masses, I can get attention.

But today, I couldn't even talk to the parents when the kids put them on the phone to see if they could leave.  I couldn't tell kids to relax, to sit down, that, no they could not go to the bathroom.  I couldn't even tell all the great jokes that were coming to my head as I tried to keep my sanity.

We stayed in the auditorium for a really long, frustrating, almost made me not want to deal with children 3 hours and then were able to release for the day.

Teachers got to go back to the school, go into our advisory kids' lockers and get their belongings to bring outside for them.  I wanted to do it in one trip and ended up almost dropping everything.

On a bright side, I now know to use my powers for good and not for evil.

I also got home earlier than normal since I could not stay after school to do anything.

The joys of flying

I love how it feels to fly.  I love being in an airplane over the farms and cities of the United States.  I love trying to guess at which point a plane has reached the necessary velocity to achieve a good liftoff from the ground and I love trying to guess when the plane is flat enough and slow enough to achieve a good smooth landing.  I love when I get a seat on an airplane that is right behind first class so that I have a ton of leg room.

I also love seeing that I am in row 9 and knowing that I will again be in the front of the airplane.

Image source

I don't love delays that are over an hour long. 

I don't love being taken to a different part of the tarmac to be let out in front of a plane that is so small that it still has propellers and looks like some sort of Tonka toy.

I don't like that the plane is so small and dainty looking that I spend much of the flight making sure I can still see row 4 - location of the emergency exit.

I don't like that I also spend much of the flight determining which of the people in the 5 rows in front of me I can beat or take out in order to get to the exit row quickly.

I do not like getting on said small plane and realizing that it is so small that row 9 is actually the LAST ROW of the entire plane.

I don't like being seated in the middle of that last row (five seats straight across like a couch) with my body not protected by a seat in front of me.  I don't like that I fear that the plane is so small that I fear that my body will be hurled through the aisles upon some sort of inevitable malfunction and I will land in the lap of the flight attendant who sits facing me throughout the entire flight - no snacks, no drinks, just her strapped to a small chair facing me the whole flight.

I do not like when my normal sized backpack does not fit in the over head bins.

I do not like when the plane is so small that the tires come out of the wings and not the underside of the plane.

I do not like when the plane, due to the delays, is stuck on the runway for 17 minutes and the engine is so powerful on such a large plane that the plane continues to rock side to side for the entire 17 minutes until we start forward motion again.

I don't like when the plane starts its decent and each lowering motion brings that stomach-moving up in your innards feeling even when there is no cloud turbulence.

I do like that I made it alive to NYC and get to spend some time with Kid Sis #1, though.

Scream bloody murder

If you didn't watch Christiane Amanpour's CNN special "Scream Bloody Murder" yesterday, you have another chance tonight.

This excellent journalist goes in-depth as she covers the genocides that occurred in Cambodia, Iraq, Darfur, and Bosnia. She finds that "instead of using a U.N. treaty outlawing genocide as a springboard to action, political leaders have invoked reason after reason to make intervention seem unnecessary, pointless and even counter-productive." She interviews individuals who tried to get the various U.S. and international government leaders to act to stop the genocide in each nation even before the last straw that grabbed international attention in each case, to no avail.

Click these two links to see CNN's information on the show and a little bit more in-depth information on the events that occurred in each of the nations covered by Amanpour.

Watch the two-hour documentary tonight at 7 pm Central time 8 pm Eastern time.