In case you missed it...

I was browsing through old e-mails in my Duke account to see if there's anything I wanted to keep before it expires and came across this little story from last year when I broke the Nasher's projector system before one of my Art History classes.

For those who don't know, the Nasher is Duke's brand-new, very expensive museum. It has these high-tech classrooms where everything is done on the computer, including putting down the shades and turning on the projector, which usually lowers from the ceiling about three feet.

That day, however, the metal projector platform raced down seven feet before it began grinding into the metal table underneath it, shaking the room and making a hellish groaning sound. The room was shaking so much the ceiling started falling down. One square of ceiling missed my head by inches. Afraid I was causing thousands of dollars in damages, I tried pushing all of the buttons on the computer. Of course, pushing all of the buttons is never really the solution to anything, and instead it made the room look possessed because lights began flashing on and off and the black-out shades began jerking up and down. I tried screaming "Help me! Someone help!" but no one came so I ran into the main entrance of the museum (it's a huge, stone, echoing room) screaming "Help me!" at the top of my lungs like a crazy person. Right when I enter this echoing room and alert everyone to my presence by screaming I trip over my own legs and fall to the floor, in front of my students who are just arriving and a couple of senior citizens.

Two hours later, during lunch, I'm telling Chris about the projector fiasco and drop my cell phone into my soup. Chris could actually hear the "plop" and the distant, muffled words that followed it. It was a sad day.