AN ALARMING FRIDAY

Staying at work late on a Friday afternoon is the last thing I want to be doing.  Actually, that's not true.  It's the second to the last thing I want to be doing.  The last thing I want to be doing is bringing work home with me.  It's the end of the term, and I have finally finished the correcting and am halfway through entering grades on the computer.

Suddenly, ceiling lights start flashing and the alarm starts screeching.  This is an alarm I've never heard before.  Our fire alarm is very civil, a female voice instructing us all to leave through the nearest exit.  This is coming from the same mechanism, but the sound is shrill and loud and booming and blasting, and lights are flashing and strobing.  A loud voice yells shrilly, "There is an emergency in your building.  Leave through the nearest exit immediately.  There is an emergency in your building!"

I'm half-expecting to hear, "Danger, Will Robinson!  Danger!  Danger!"

The few of us stragglers pop heads into each other's rooms  Do we have to leave?  Is this a drill?  What's going on?  Will we be able to get back inside once we leave?

Since this is all new to us, we decide to take a minute to gather our stuff and do what the voice screams at us to do: get the hell out of the building.  Madly dashing about my room, I throw papers and binders into my backpack, shut the laptop, gather my personal belongings, make sure I have my car key, check to make sure things are shut off (I realize too late that my printer is still on), then lock the door behind me.

Oh, and I stop in the ladies' room because I will definitely pee my pants before I can ever make it remotely close to my house.  By the time I wander outside with the other people, I could easily be dead of whatever is happening inside the building (chlorine leak, gunman, nuclear attack, tidal wave...).

The alarm finally shuts off after about eight minutes, and some of my colleagues meander back inside.  Not me, though.  I am not going back inside and risking jumping out of my own skin should the damn alarm go off again.  It's not until about an hour after I arrive home that I discover I forgot one key piece of information back at school.

Oh, well.  I have a few days to change grades.  I have no idea if I entered the "Incomplete" grades correctly, and I have even less of an idea as to why I give a damn, anyway.  I get into my car and drive away, encountering police, fire truck, and ambulance all still parked in the front loop of the school, lights ablaze.  It appears that this is not a drill -  they appear to be as confused as are we.

So much for staying late on a Friday.  Let that be a lesson to me.  Let that be a lesson to us all!  From now on on Friday afternoons, I won't need a scary, alien alarm to order me out of the building because my butt will already be gone as soon as the gates are open.