About a month ago, I was in the middle of a lecture (lolz, that sounds like a fancy version of what I was actually doing, which is tripping over my sentences/chewing on the end of my dry-erase marker while I called on students whose eyes were slowly betraying them like "helllpppp when does this class end").
ANYhow, I'm standing up there and all of a sudden the door opens, but not without some struggle. You see, this door is a little bit rickety because it's in the Engineering Lab (yes, my English class is in the Engineering Lab....whatever). This particular building has no windows because they want everyone at USU to easily identify engineering majors by their pale complexions and inability to make eye contact with anyone I guess. I don't even K. So anyhow, the hinges of this door probably haven't been serviced since 1973 and the kid on the other end (whoever he was) just could not get it open. I knew it wasn't any of my students cuz they were all accounted for (ha, it sounds like I'm taking roll after a natural disaster) (the natural disaster was my lecture) (ha ha ha, get it).
So in the middle of me talking, this door is just rattling and the guy on the other side is trying to get in but he just can't handle the door, and my students are now totally distracted by the door getting pushed open a little then closed again, then opened a little, then closed, then op
And I'm still talking to pretend like I don't know what's going on but let's be real I really wanted to see if this guy was going to make it through the door. The suspense was killing me.
Other things killing me in this moment:
- a guy trying to open a door was more interesting to my students than my lecture
- a guy trying to open a door was more interesting to me than my lecture
So finally after what seems like ten years he opens the door with a loud screech and it kinda swings open all dramatic and hits the wall on the other side like in mobster movies (uhhh citation please??). He stands there for another 5 years (time slows down when you're experiencing a humiliating moment in front of 20+ strangers...trust me. I know. I experience it twice a week). Realizes he's just "opened" (lol that's not the verb describing what he did but I honestly have no idea what it was) the door to a classroom he thought was his...but alas! It's not his class.
His eyes get really big and this awful knowledge starts to spread over his face...like he's suddenly aware of what he's done and he knows it's going to haunt him for years to come. Observe:
♫ Hit me like a freight train, baby ♪
You think the story ends here, and it would if this was a perfect, exalted world, and all the awkwardness was burned out of us by the Holy Ghost. But no.
He slowly backs out of the classroom, "swinging" the door shut behind him (again, wrong verb, because whatever he did was not as simple or fluid as "swinging," but my words escape me when describing this scene). Unfortunately for him, he doesn't know that the old rubber doorstop fell down when he opened the door. So the door is now stuck.
He can't shut it and he couldn't open it. For him, this is Dante's Seventh Circle. Probably. Now he's yanking the door towards him without noticing the doorstop. All of us are frozen in place, looking down at the ground like, "Come on man, get it together, look down at the doorstop, it's right there, it's blocking the door, please shut the door, oh my gosh I can't take this awkwardness anymore, please can we dismiss class early and stop watching this kid try to close the door that he never meant to open, this is some kind of fresh hell...." I realize these are probably just my thoughts and not my students'. I realize that.
Finally after much yanking and forehead-sweat-beadlets and buggy eyes and awkward grunts and faces like this from onlookers (me + my students):
...he closed the door. With a loud slam. And then we all exhaled finally and I tried to go on with the lecture but mostly we just fake-laughed to ourselves because what the actual he*k?! I feel for him, I truly do. Which is why I'm sharing his story on the world wide web.
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