The Quiet One

You always here on the news about the guy next door, you know the ones, “Oh he was so quiet I would have never suspected he was the Prince of Darkness ruler of all evil and gruesome death who liked to chop people up into tiny little pieces and feed them to his three legged Chihuahua with one eye .”

I live next to some of the loudest most retarded neighbors on the planet and I must say I’m pretty damn happy. If for some reason they move away and I get some single guy moving in next door who keeps to himself, never borrows anything and has his groceries delivered to his door, while the delivery man knocks threes times…..waits two steps and then knocks again before a 20 is slipped under the door, I’m out of here. Crap I think I just described myself.

“Well I’m heading out.” Sped says to me

“Really? Why the hell did you come in anyway?” I ask him

“I dunno.”

“So you leave at 1:00pm to catch the UPS guy at your house, who doesn’t show up until 6:00pm, then roll back into here for no apparent reason, and then leave 45 minutes later?”

“Yeah”

“Humph”

“Yeah well you only have one student in the quiet lab and one out here so you should be fine.”

“I was fine before you showed up…….. Anyway who’s the one student in the lab room?” I ask

“I dunno stocky, blonde, sits in the same place every time.”

DUN, DUN, DUN

“Oh crap, you mean that creepy guy who always wears the same cloths?”

“Maybe”

“And sits right next to the door?”

“Yeah I guess”

“And has a third arm growing out of his back?”

“What…huh……NO!”

“Just seeing if your paying attention, but is this one really QUIET?”

“Yeah kinda, why who is he?”

“Oh I dunno just some guy.”

“Well I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

I cringe as he walks off out of site. This guy is really weird; he always has the same facial expression no matter what. I mean the guys foot could be on fire and you would walk up to him and say “Hey guy (like I care what his name is) you know your foots on fire” and he would just look down, look back up at you and say “yeah, so” while chewing on the side of his cheek. I cracked a joke at this guy once to try and break the tension and all he did was look down at me for what seemed an eternity without saying a word, without blinking, hell I don’t even think he was breathing, and then finally he said “That wasn’t funny.” Turned and walked away.
Freaky huh?
He also never wants to leave this place. In fact he even scares the Zombies out of the center, which up until that started happening I didn’t think they were scared of anything, but you know what, they are, they are indeed, they are scared of “That Guy”. I’m not even sure he is a student here; he just appears out of no where. Fucking little Houdini bastard.

I look up at the clock, 50 minutes until closing. I hate trying to get him out of here, he never takes the hint. Usually I just lock up and leave, when I come back the next day I’m just thankful he’s gone and I still have my life. You all laugh but we get some pretty freaky people in here considering we give loans out to anything that can still move and has a slight pulse. Wait……scratch that……..I don’t think you need a pulse either, and there might be a check box on the application for “moving” being optional. Anyway, let’s get back to “The Guy”. I walk over to the water cooler where there is a large glass window looking into the quiet lab. How fitting the quiet guy always sits in the quiet lab. Crouched down I raise my eye lids up as far as they can go to the point that they hurt to scan the room through the glass.

I pear around the room……nothing, empty. The little bastard disappeared on me. Well no worries, at least I don’t have to try and push him out of the center……or worry about starting my car. I look down at my glass as the water trickles from the cooler filling it up. I stand up and take a deep gulp.

“Ahhhh, it’s good, it’s good.” I say to myself.

I turn around and “Holy shit, where the hell did you come from….I mean can I help you?” It’s “The Guy”. Fuckin Houdini bastard.

“No you can’t.” He says keeping his head down but raising only his eyes just enough to meet with mine……damn that’s creepy.

“Ummmm, ok, I’m cool with that.” I say trying to act all non-scared and what not. “I mean, I’m cool if your cool, that is to say if your cool with me being cool about being cool then I’m cool, otherwise I’m not cool, I’m just….you know…..”

In a very low voice he says “Shut the fuck up and move.” staring at me until finally letting out an evil smirk. I shuffle out of his way spilling half my water as I try to suck myself up to the glass window like holiday window cling.

He didn’t even raise his voice when he said that, and it still sounded scary as hell, what a freak. I think he might be an alien, or a robot, or worse yet, an alien robot guy. Staring at me with those dark eyes, probably reading my thoughts right now, yeah an evil robot guy from space or something. I think I saw an X-Files episode about him, it was called “Evil scary robot alien guy from outer space”, or something along those lines…..I’m sure of it.

Like a dark shadow of sinister death he slithers back into the quiet lab to do whatever it is he does. Five minutes to close I start walking around the center to lock up. The doctor comes out of the medical lab shutting off the lights as he leaves the room. This is in direct sight of the “The Guy” in the quiet lab; you think he would get the hint, but not this guy, nope. I head into the quiet lab and lock the door leading to the normal outside world in which I am from and “The Guy” is not. Oh how I can’t wait to go through that door. I start turning off all the machines near him watching myself so I don’t get to close. Like a hungry lion he follows my every move around the room, as if he is waiting until my guard is down to pounce.

“So I guess it’s time to close up shop here……yep……..8 o’clock….time to close.”

“No it’s not” he says to me

“Ummmm, no it’s not time.” Holy shit is he using Jedi mind tricks on me “wait, wait, yes it is.” I repeat

“I said, NO IT IS NOT”

“Yes, well I’ll just be in here if you need me then.” Scurrying off before I get a knife in my back

With this I walk out of the quiet lab, lock the remaining doors grab my stuff and get the hell out of there. I put the car key into my car door and glance up at the fifth floor window seeing only a dark shadow standing there. I hesitate, afraid to open the door. Where was he for those fifteen minutes I didn’t see him in the center? I peak under my car, nope no foreign objects. I slowly open the door wincing, waiting, anticipating a bomb to go off or something. Nothing…..silent. I breathe a sigh of relief, sit down in my car and start it up…..oh shit, what if it was rigged to the ignition…..stupid, stupid, stupid. Well nothing happened this time, thank god, but you have to watch out “for the quiet ones”.

Fucking Houdini bustard…………

Chain Letters Rule SUCK!!!!!

Why do people insist on filling my inbox with chain letters?

“If you don’t send this chain letter back to me it means you don’t love me”

There must be a lot of people that think I don’t love them anymore.

“I sent this letter to only my very special friends; I would hope you would return it to me to show me how much of a friend I am to you.”

No, a very special friend would have deleted it and saved me the misery of having to open something I thought was from a very special friend but has now been added to my hate spam list for wasting the last 2.6 seconds of my life I will never see again.
Can you send a chain letter to get my 2.6 seconds back, huh?

Can you? I didn’t think so.

“If you don’t send this to ten people in the next ten minutes 10 people around the world will die.”

I call this Gods natural selection in life, who am I to interfere, and maybe just maybe I will get lucky and God will pick the originator of this letter to be one of those lucky ten people.

“Send this to 50 people in the next 24 hours to have good luck the rest of the week.”

50 people…..hmmmmm…..I know this may come as a surprise to some but I don’t even have 50 people I could send this to……(place sarcasm here). I suppose if I added up all my old email addresses I could send it to myself 50 times. I’m not sure which is more sad, the fact that I don’t have 50 people in my address book to send it to, the fact that I actually for 1 second (now I am up to 3.6 seconds of my life wasted) thought to send this garbage to other people, or that I actually have more old email addresses than people in my address book.

“Send this to ten people you care or a little girl will die in a third world country.”

Ok, ok I’m pretty sure I will not be the cause of a little girls death in a third world country because of a piece of shit chain letter filling my inbox, but if for some act beyond the God’s of email I am because I didn’t send this chain letter out to other people, are you going to pay my therapy bills for the next 10 years for the guilt I feel for causing such damage? Are you going to help me through rehab because I am so afraid to go near a computer now “because they can kill people with email”. Yeah I didn’t think so.

“Send this to 15 people to enlarge your penis. And if you really care about the size of my penis you will send this back to me.”

Ok, I sent this one out…….why is no one sending it back to me????.......oh…….I see.

Here’s a chain letter for you, “Send this letter to anyone and your inbox will be filled with spam, your dog will piss on the carpet, you will be stuck in rush hour traffic, your boss will demand more work in less time, the pop machine will eat you money, the shopping cart in Wal-Mart’s parking lot will roll into your car, it will rain, or not, someone will die…….eventually……”

And for any of you who any one of these things happened to you, now you can blame it on my stupid chain letter.

I’m still waiting for you to send the penis enlargement one back to me………anyone?

I really REALLY hate Fridays!

Have I reminded you all lately how much I hate Fridays? For those of you who don’t know my schedule I will explain. Thursday nights I close the center, so I'm not home until around 10:00pm or so. I usually make myself something to eat shortly after getting home, read my emails, check my porn downloads, and watch some TV. Since my schedule all week consists of me starting at noon and closing the center I am wide awake when I get home until about midnight. This doesn't change Thursday nights even though Friday I have to turn around and open the center at 8:00am. Traffic in the morning is hell so I end up leaving my house around 6:30 am, which means I'm awake at about 5:30. Not much sleep from Thursday to Friday, to top it off it is a nine hour day instead of 8, and every other week I get to look forward to working Saturday as well. That’s not the worst of it, the bad thing is, Fridays are actually a very busy day for us, and I'm all alone. No nurse, no doctor (and by no Doctor, I mean mentally), no other IT teachers…..nothing, just me and the dreaded admissions people. This leaves me scrambling all day long answering questions from both IT and medical, administering tests, giving labs and of course, the occasional surprise orientations that the admissions people failed to tell me about or schedule with me. And now with no director in this place it is just that much more hell. Friday is just plain hell and I hate them more then Mondays. The last two Fridays were no exception……….let me explain………..

-Friday-

I arrive at about 10 minutes to 8, just enough time to swap out the back-up tapes and get everything up and running. 5 minutes after 8 the first student has arrived. For some reason Fridays seem to attract the most helpless of all students to the center.

"I need help" the student says

"Ah ok, just let me get logged into my machine." I tell him

-TAP-TAP-TAP

"Ok, so what's the problem?" I ask

"The other mentor signed me up for the wrong course."

"Well I know he's stupid, but are you sure?"

"Yeah, he signed me up to iNet+ for the CIW course."

"But the CIW course doesn't accept the iNet+ course as one of its elective courses"

"Yeah I know this now that I tried to get my certification and they denied it, now I wasted the last two months studying something that I can't use." He tells me

"Well I will get you the proper courseware, and extend your tuition for another two months to cover any lost time."

8:16, first dilemma resolved from Sped.

8:20, 12 students are now in the center……this place is filling up fast, I can already tell that it is going to be one hell of a day.

8:30, -DING- the front desk bell rings informing me that someone has entered and our secretary has not arrived yet. I'll wait a few minutes until I hear at least a second ding telling me they're bored. Besides my internet radio is not up and running yet.

-DING-DING-

Oooo…..two dings, must be something or someone important. I head out to the front to be greeted by a very lovely young lady with one hell of a rack. (Oh yeah they were real)

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah I'm supposed to take a test at 8:30"

"Ok no problem let me go into the office and see who is here to help administer that for you."

I head into the office where the only other person here is the admissions person……..oh goodie.

"Hey I have someone here to take a test, can you administer it?"

"Sure!"

I do a double take, what the fuck, he actually knows how to do this……cool, one less thing for me to worry about. I head back out into the lobby.

"Someone will be with you in just a minute" I tell her

"Ok, thank you." She says as she smiles back at me, while I continually stare at her enormous breasts………damn those things are huge. Anyway, I head back to my desk where I am greeted by a fairly new student. He is an older gentleman, and always has a ton of questions about everything. I call him Grandpa Simpson since he is able to take any conversation and seamlessly join it into a never ending story about absolutely nothing.

"I need some help."

"I would have never guessed." I sit down at my desk and begin typing away at nothing trying to make it look like I have more pressing matters to attend to. This doesn't phase him however.

"I can't seem to understand or grasp this whole sub-netting thingy."

Hoping to confuse him into a coma I begin, "An IP address is a unique identifier for a node or host connection on an IP network it's a 32 bit binary number usually represented as 4 decimal values, each representing 8 bits, in the range 0 to 255, known as octets separated by decimal points. Before you can even begin to subnet you need to know which class of IP addresses you are going to use A, B, or C. You do know which class you're trying to subnet right? Well anyway, the network bits are represented by the 1's in the mask, and the node bits are represented by the 0's………" His eye brow burrows down at me as he tries to understand what I am saying before he says.

"Back in the day my boys and I would go fishing all weekend long, and back then there were no limits unless of course the wife had potatoes for supper, cause the roads were really ruff, and that's why I climbed the silo…….."

Whew sure am glad the distraction worked, now all I have to do is look over at him every fifteen minutes or so and nod my head in acknowledgment. But let's keep in mind that it is Friday so we all know this won't last long either.

"Hey, I need your help up front." See I told you so! The admissions specialist is sweating profusely and looks as if he is about to break down. Normally I would ignore him, but I'm not about to pass up a free opportunity to stare at large breasts, plus my only other option is to sit here and listen about the civil war from Grandpa Simpson. I head up to the lobby where the admissions specialist is sitting at the computer shaking his head back and forth.

"What's the problem?"

"I can't find her name on today's schedule to take a test."

"That's because you’re a moron and you're looking at the Vue testing manager for Information Technology tests. She is here to take a medical exam."

"Oh, so what do we do now?" he asks

"Are you kidding me? You don't know how to do this?"

"No"

"Well neither do I, I'm not a medical person, nor do I have any medical students where I would have experience on this." Meanwhile it's going on 9am now and the student was scheduled to take this test 30 minutes ago. Just then another student walks through the door up to the front desk where both I and the admissions specialist are biting our nails feverishly trying to figure out what the hell to do.

"Hi, I'm scheduled to take a medical exam at 9."

"Ok, just have a seat right next to the other young lady also waiting to take a medical exam and we will be with you shortly." I tell her

"I look down as the admissions specialist is in a total freak mode now."

"What are we going to do, we don't know how to get their exams and….."

-SLAP-

"Dammit man snap out of it" I tell him "start going through all these filing cabinets, there must be some documentation somewhere around here about these damn exams."

Moments later…"Here I found something on the medical exams." He tells me

"Good, give it to me"

"But I found it."

"Oh shut up, we all know you can't read." I begin thumbing through the book as quickly as humanly possible "blah, blah, blah, yep, ok, ok, yep……ah ha……ok, you two need to look over the exam instructions, then fill out this form saying you acknowledge the rules and will abide by them." I hand the forms and the book to the two ladies and look back at the admissions specialist "Ok I bought us a few minutes" I tell him. Just then the second student that arrives looks over at me. Judging by her scowl I can tell I am about to get an ear full from an angry student.

"Are you telling me you guys don't know how to give the exam?"

"Well we're working on it" I tell her "Not sure who set these up or why that person is not here now but we will get it straightened out shortly, don't worry." This does not seem to have satisfied her however as she began to describe in great detail and a very loud voice just how bad this school is using every expletive known to man. I look back at the admissions specialist "You deal with her; I'm going into the testing room to get things setup."

"Me….what…..but….." he stutters

"Do you know anything about computers? I didn't think so; you’re the people person, now people-ize dammit." I head into the testing room and begin setting up two computers for the test only to find out that I need a login and password specific to each person that was emailed to the secretary the day before. I walk back out into the lobby where the one student is still screaming at our admissions specialist while the other student sits in awe. Just then the secretary finally walks through the door.

"Good you’re here, now we can get the login and password info needed to get these tests going" I say to her

"What login and password, I never received anything."

"Great……ok here, call the medical testing admissions, it's in New Jersey so they should be open by now, tell them we need to get the login and password for these two ladies." I hand her the phone number with the testing center "If you need me I will be at my desk." I leave the now very disturbing bitch fest and head once again back to my desk. It is now 9:30. An hour and a half since I opened the center and already I am ready for a drink.
The secretary comes running back to me.

"The Medical testing center says they emailed them to the old director." She says

"Oh great, tell them he doesn't work here anymore and we need them to resend them to you."

"Ok" She runs back to the lobby. Fifteen minutes later at 9:45 I see the secretary escorting both ladies into the testing center. Whew now maybe I can get some stuff done. I can see the admissions specialist behind her, but instead of going into the testing room with her, he continues on towards me.

"Hey I have a walk in orientation today can you take care of it?"

"Well since I am here all by myself I guess I will have to now won't I."

10:45 done with my orientation and getting exhausted. The good thing about Fridays, if there is such a thing, the day goes by real fast. By now our second admissions specialist has joined us and is also walking around helpless. I can tell he is looking for me, since he has the obvious lost look on his face.

"The doctor needs some help." He says to me

"No, the doctor is helpless!"

Let me explain my last statement. The doctor was brought into the school for one purpose and one purpose only. His credentials! He can't speak very much English; he takes about 200 smoke breaks every hour. He is never at his desk, has no idea how to do anything involving the school. This is a guy who could be replaced with a giant card board cut out, placed behind his desk with a little waving hand and no one would ever know the difference.

"He is trying to administer a remote test for a student." He explains

"We don't administer remote tests because it is a pain in the ass."

"Well apparently the other teacher set it up and told him how to do it."

"Go figure, this is the third damn time Sped has set up a remote test on the days he is gone because he knows what a pain in the ass it is, he also knows that he is not supposed to be doing this anymore."

"Well he did." He tells me

The only thing that would please me on this Friday would be hearing news that Sped was hit by a Mac truck and dragged for several miles down a gravel road naked, upside down, while killer bees sting him, before colliding into a tanker truck hauling sulfuric acid.

"Fine, give me the person's number and I will call them." He hands me a small post it note and walks off. I dial up the number……

"Hello" the voice on the other side of the line says

"Hello, I hear you are having some trouble getting a test to start."

"Yeah, but I am on the other line with the doctor, should I let him go?"

"No, leave him on hold he will not know the difference, besides it will keep him busy for awhile." I tell her

After several minutes of going over all the normal settings, I walk back to the doctor's office where I see him repeating "ello, ello, ellllooooo......" over and over again into his phone. I take control of his machine and continue to setup the remote test; I then go back to my desk to tell the student she is all ready to go.

"But the screen is blank."

"What do you mean the screen is blank?"

"I dunno, I clicked the link and it opened a new window, and I can see how much time is left, but I can't see anything."

"Hmmmmm, sounds like you might have a firewall blocking this. What firewall software are you using?"

"I have no idea, I'm at work."

"You're at work, well then hell yes your being blocked, your trying to virtually connect to remote machine and vise versa, of course your work is blocking you. You will need to come in to take the test."

"But this is the reason I chose your school, I was promised I could do everything remotely." She tells me

"Who ever would have promised you that?"

"The admissions person that signed me up, oh and some guy named.........!"

"Sped?"

"Yeah, I think so."

Ok, ok, now there are two things that would make me happy this Friday and both involve the same Mac truck but but now two people tied to one another. I explain to her that she will either need to come in to take the test or we could try and do this again but when she is at home and I might have more control over certain settings on her machine to allow the test. She agrees and hangs up. It is now almost 1:00pm and I am really in need of a stiff drink now. I sit back down at my desk where one of my Oracle students looks over from across the room.

"Busy day?" He says

"Yeah, but Fridays always are." I say with a smile. Just then the secretary rounds the corner.

"I have my very first accounting orientation today; can you sit in and watch over me in case I need help?"

"You’re an accountant?" I say in shock

"No not yet, but I am working on it." Seems to be a common occurrence here.

"Sure." I tell her, this might be my only chance today I get to relax. "Just make sure you print out their course guide, this will make things a lot easier in there."

"Ok"

I enter the conference room for the orientation and across the table I see two foreign people sitting. Already I know this orientation is going to take much longer because the secretary will be repeating herself a lot, or so I thought.
"So, this is your course." The secretary explains. She then proceeds to cross her hands together and sit back. The room is silent for several moments. I look over at her where she leans over and whispers to me.

"This is where you pick up." Wonderful, now I am an accounting teacher. I soon realize that I will be the one repeating myself over, and over and over again. I try to explain the course as best I can. Throughout the orientation I find myself talking much as I did to my blind student, louder and enunciating every syllable like an idiot. The orientation finally ends 3 hours later. I walk out of the room looking like I was just hit and dragged down a gravel road by the earlier referenced Mac truck. The secretary turns to me and says.

"Thanks a lot." And turns to walk away

"Yeah whatever." I respond

It is now 4:00pm, one hour before closing. I can see the lack of any teacher in the school has caused every student to leave early including Grandpa Simpson....thank god for small miracles. I sit down at my desk and go through a few emails and other minor details that need to be done before the end of the day. By the time I am finished it is now 4:30, just 30 minutes before closing. I decide I don't need the zombies showing up late in the day so I head out front and lock the door, only to find out I am the only one left in the entire school. Great, glad I could do everyone else's jobs for them today and they all got to go home early because of it. I head back to my desk grab my car keys, turn off the lights and proceed to head out before anything else could possibly go wrong.

God I hate Fridays!

Calgone take me away………