"Hey, is anybody there?"

I'm starting to feel the rumblings of a cold or something coming on.  Hope not, Christmas music season is fast approaching and with that comes Christmas solos.  I hate it when a cold interferes with that!  Anyway.

Thought you might like to know that the two blogs I had concerns about are A-okay.  Mocha Momma is just on a wee bit of a hiatus because the creation of her new webpage will take longer than expected.  9 Bartlett is back up, so I don't know what's up with it coming up as deleted last week.  Weird.  Anyway, all is well.  I know you were all losing sleep over it, so now you can slumber.  :)

Something I just saw on another blog jarred a memory I haven't thought about in a while, so I thought I'd jot down a few words about it.  It was one of the funnier moments I've experienced (almost)  by myself.

Waaay back when, I attended the University of Maine at Orono.  I had so much fun my freshman year, I had to have a second one.  First semester GPA the first go 'round was a 1.0.  Second semester was a 1.6.  That's when Dad and the university decided I was going to take a little time off to reassess my college education.  Two years later, after having worked in Quality Control for a factory that made machine guns and shock absorbers, I returned to UMO for a second shot.  Because of my stellar performance the first time, I had to re-take all the courses I'd taken before.  One of those classes was Psych 101- Introduction to Psychology which was taught by Dr. Ellen Lenney.  This was the 70's, and I will just tell you that Dr. Lenney never wore a bra.  She was small-breasted, but it was obvious.  I noticed this every single class.  She always wore a really cool necklace that rested between her itty-bittys.  I didn't necessarily always wear a bra  myself at the time.  Listen, it was the 70's, okay?  But, I digress.

At that time, it was a requirement of the course that we participate in three psych experiments during the course of the semester.  So, one, two, three, I signed up and participated.  I can't remember anything much about them now, but I did participate as needed.  I hated taking the exams for this class.  They were always multiple choice exams and it was too easy to get messed up on an answer.  I dreaded the long walk up to the third floor of the Psych Department a few days after each test.  They would post the test and all the answers on a wall in the lobby area.  One day, I made my way up the stairs and entered the hallway outside the Psych office.  There was the test, posted on the glass doors of a display cabinet.  It was kind of freaky being there.  I mean, come on, it was the Psych Department.  Weird things happened up there.  So, there I was, all alone, a little creeped out, comparing the correct answers to the test with my own.  I mean to tell you that I was feeling a wee bit paranoid for no particular reason.

As I read the test answers, I heard a voice call out, "Hey, is anybody there?"  A chill ran up my spine and my heart skipped a beat.  I seemed to stop breathing for a second or two, as well.  I kept my head very still and kept looking ahead at the answers.  Again, I heard a voice cry out, "Hey, is anybody out there?"  As much as I wanted to keep looking straight ahead and pretend I heard nothing, I couldn't resist a look around.  I tried to look like I wasn't looking for a hidden camera, but I was.  Nope, didn't see anything and there was no one around.  Not one person was around.  By this point, my heart was in my throat, I couldn't breathe and I felt like an idiot.  I was pretty sure that some sick individual had just added a fourth experiment to my requirement without my knowledge or consent.  I refused to play that game, yessirree.  They weren't gonna fool me and use my video in their next candid-camera-foolish-Psych-student-caught-unaware.  Nuh-uh.  Noooope.  So, I went back to checking the answers.  No sooner had I looked back at the test taped to the windows did the voice once more shout out to me, "Hey!  HEEY!  Hey, is anybody out there?  Please?  Is anybody out there?"

Just to my right, I caught something out of the corner of my eye.  A brown paper towel fluttered to the ground.  I couldn't just stand there and ignore it, so I walked the tens steps to where it lay on the floor.  When I picked it up, I noticed writing on it that said, "Help!  I'm trapped in the bathroom!"  I looked up to see a door marked "Men".  I gave a knock, knock, knock on the door and said, "Hello?"  From beyond the door, a voice told me that he was in a wheelchair and he couldn't get out of the bathroom.  The poor guy had been able to get into the bathroom, but once the door shut behind him, he couldn't angle the chair to get out and from the position he was in, he couldn't unlock the door, either.  I went into the Psych office and explained the situation.  Help in the way of a custodian with a key was found quickly and, soon enough, the guy was out.

We laughed and joked about it a little bit nervously and then we both went on our merry ways.  I'm still not quite convinced that I wasn't an experimental dupe.  I guess after 30 years, though, I can stop worrying that I made the textbooks.

I would like you to know that I did graduate from UMO with high distinction, three years after I was to originally graduate.  I decided that something called "studying" wasn't such a bad idea and I reduced my number of nights at fraternity parties to one or two a week down from four or five.  See?  I learned my lesson well.