Made my evening trek into the school tonight.  9:00 p.m.  Kids are safely tucked into their beds, dark load of laundry is in process, house is tidy and relatively clean… therefore it is time to lesson plan!  I think my van could drive the well-worn path there and back on auto-pilot, if need be.

When I got to the school parking lot, it was sheer ice.  I thought to myself, “If I go down, and I can’t get back up, there is no one in earshot to scrape my sorry self off the ground .”  The buses would have used me as a speed bump in the morning.  Poor Rosie, our custodian, would have found me frozen solid…stuck half-way between the bottom step and the wheelchair ramp.   The kids would’ve made me into a sled jump.   I would’ve been a goner.  And my luck, I would have also fallen on top of my new-to-me cell phone and crushed it.  We all know the probability of this happening.

Very likely.

So, carefully avoiding calamity, I tip-toed up the icy steps and fit the key in the door.  And while managing to avoid breaking a hip or an arm in the process, I opened the door and lunged into the school.   Safe.at.last.

And my reward for not falling on my assets and splitting my head open will be another night spent listening to the various toilets of Bloomfield Elementary flush in sync like some glorious symphony.

You’ve gotta be there at 9:05 p.m. to know whereof I speak.  It is truly one of the eight wonders of the world. No word of a lie.

Until one has entered a school after hours and stayed for more than a five-minute jaunt in and out, one cannot truly appreciate what is the absolute hollowness of the hallways, what is the utter spookiness of the long, dark corridors and how truly empty and devoid of life a school is during the late hours of the evening.   It is spectacular, really.  There is so much more to notice.

And oh! how in tune one’s sense of hearing becomes.  And oh! how heightened are one’s other four senses.

I am so brave.  I am so fearless.

Who would’ve ever thought the young girl who could not walk into the dark basement of her own home would’ve ever been able to rise to such summits of achievement.  Forget getting my university degrees, or any other meager accomplishments I might boast of in life.  I have braved the toilets of Bloomfield Elementary School and lived to tell the tale.