Which One is Icky, the Earthworm or the Computer?
By Linda Cole

Ringgg, "Can you sub today?" It was not the phone voice I usually heard at 6:00 in the morning. I didn’t have another job for the day, so I answered ’yes’ before I knew what the job was. "It’s for a science class at North Middle School." Every teacher probably has a feared subject. Mine was science. Hoping I wasn’t going to be required to dissect an earthworm, I got ready to work hard for my day's pay.

When I got to class, the teacher was there. He explained he was feeling sick and wouldn’t be staying. He had a video on the physics of flight.

"Fine, a video, no problem," I thought.

Then he began to explain the procedure. The video was wired into his computer. So was his lesson plan. So was the seating chart. So was the attendance that I was supposed to beam to the school secretary. She had given me directions on how to operate their high tech role system and assured me earlier that if I had any problems, I could call her.

The first class came in and settled down easily enough. He took the role, transferred to a different file and put up his study questions up on the classroom TV. Then he told me about his extra box. To get to the video, switch to terminal ’B’. If the picture gets fuzzy, pull out this plug, and put it back in, then restart the computer using this switch.

"I think I'm coming down with something," he told the class. "But I'm leaving you in the capable hands of Mrs. Cole. Treat her with the same respect as you treat me." Then he left me with R2D2.

What could be easier? It was all programmed for me. All I had to do was work switches and buttons. One problem quickly jumped to the forefront. The secretary’s explanation of how to take role was different than the teacher’s. I chose the teacher’s. How could I tell if my beaming process had been successful. I gave the secretary a call.

" Did you receive my attendance?" I asked

"I won’t know until the end of the period," she replied.

Then I went to change to the right screen folder for the study questions. But when I did, I shut down the seating chart. The chart, alas, was gone forever, floating on an unnamed microchip, somewhere in computer oblivion.

The next period, I tried to take attendance again. But to do so, I had to call the secretary. "I’ve lost the seating chart."

"Can you pull up the role list?" she asked.

I had the list on the screen only moments before, but now it seemed to resist retrieval. I started the class with their study questions, while I tried to figure out where the computer had hidden the role. I found it by the end of the period but at the cost of loosing the study questions.

By the next period, I lost them both. I tried the wire jiggling, unplugging and plugging, and the switch. This class became the one for which no one was absent. Of course no one was officially present either. I just went right on to the video.

I called the secretary again.

"I’ll come down," she promised.

She forgot.

The next period came.

In a last ditch effort to get control of the technological meltdown, I decided to ignore the teacher’s instructions, choosing to follow those that the secretary had given me when I first came in that morning.

I shut down the computer.

Now the role was lost. The lesson was lost. And the video was lost.

Once again, I called the secretary. We were now on a first name basis. First, I confessed to loosing the role.

"Oh that’s all right. It's the end of the day and I know who's here."

Then I confessed to loosing the video.

"I’ll have one of the science teachers come in."

I waited, while the next class gradually arrived. Now I literally had nothing. By the time he came, the class was restless. Fortunately this was a good class. But even at that, with this amount of disarray, goodness was a bit too much to ask. They were loud but not disorderly, and had to be quieted down by the science teacher.

"I don’t need this noise, and I don’t think your substitute does either." The science teacher worked with the computer / VCR setup for awhile, mumbled something about the teacher I was replacing, and then gave up searching for the solution. "I’ll just get you a different VCR." He disappeared and returned with a common TV/VCR cart, and plugged it in.

The class was saved, or so I thought. Then I smelled gas. It was the science class, so my first thought was that someone opened a Bunsen burner valve as a prank. I walked around the counters trying not to let on that anything was wrong. The video was more than enough to make me look inept, now all I needed was a prank to finish off my day of techno terror. There were no such valves, but there was a gas stove where two students had just been.

When I asked them about it they simply said, "When you lean against the knobs, sometimes gas leaks out." Apparently the teacher had left the gas connected for the sake of doing science experiments.

I called the secretary.

"I hate to tell you. But now I smell gas."

"I’ll send the janitor down."

That class was over, and the final class of the day came in. The school day was almost done. Now if I could just get out of there without setting fire to or blowing up any of the students, I would be happy.

The janitor came down to check it out. "This is nothing," he said. "Sometimes this place really smells like gas."

I guess that was supposed to comfort me. But when I got home, just before I curled up to take a much needed and deserved nap, I wondered, "How much gas was he used to?"