The Noise

As I pull into the parking lot on a crisp autumn morning, I see a class out on the playground running and playing and just enjoying life. I thought it was kind of weird because it’s 8:00 in the morning and this isn’t anywhere close to their recess time and they sure as hell haven’t earned any extra recesses yet this year. Not that it really matters to me, but I just thought it was a bit peculiar as I was navigating towards my parking spot to start my day.

I walk in the door and the first thing that greets me is Titanium Tim. Titanium Tim is the school resource officer that is literally half titanium alloy or aluminum at this point due to an absurd number of surgeries he’s had — a brisk walk would outpace his run. He greets me with an over-the-top cheerful “man you’re starting off with a good mornin’ aren’t ya?”

“Every morning is a good morning, Tim,” I reply as I brush him off to quickly punch in at the time clock.

“They say it’s one of your wires coming out of that ceiling that’s making the noise”

“Who is they and what wire and what noise?”

“Oh, they didn’t call you?”

“No?”

“Well apparently there’s one of your wires in Harris’s room that’s making some loud noise or somethin’.”

“…what wire of mine could possibly be making noise?”

“I don’t know man that’s just what they said.”

“Who is they???”

“Freeman, I guess. Brother, I don’t know I’m just tellin’ ya what they told me.”

“Fine. Let me set my stuff down first.”

We walk down there and sure enough there’s a pretty loud noise. It sounds like one of the bells on the intercom system got stuck in the “on” position… except it’s not coming from the intercom. It’s coming from the opposite side of the room. The same side of the room as “the wire”.

My first and, really, only mistake was listening to them instead of just doing my own investigation. I begin looking where they said it was coming from (the audio/video cable that you use connect a DVD player to the projector). Yeah, it’s a bit louder in that area, but there’s no way in hell it’s making this loud of a sound.

I get my sciatic-nerve-on-fire-half-my-leg-and-foot-numb self on a table because Tim is just standing there completely uselessly. I begin to pop open a few ceiling tiles, poke my head into the ceiling, and determine that the noise is for sure not coming from “the wire” nor the ceiling.

I replace the ceiling tiles and limp my way back down to the floor. I notice that it’s a bit louder by some wall powered microscopes (this is in a science classroom) they have set up on a table so I start unplugging anything in the area and the noise just isn’t going away.

I tell Tim to just stay here (basically keep doing what he’s already doing so expertly) and that I’m going to start flipping breakers to see if we have some insane interference being caused by God knows what. I flip all the breakers for that room and it’s still as loud as ever. I limp back down there and begin to just listen.

As I’m just using my ears to navigate (much like the entire premise of Bird Box) I’m cancelling out the incredible echoes of the noise and Tim’s incessant rambling. I’m honing in on the target. But as I dial myself in, I begin to feel an overwhelming wave of regret. I know what’s happening. I did this to myself. I’m becoming self-aware — self-aware of the fact that I assumed that they knew what they were talking about.

I listen. I listen hard. I divert all non-critical sensory input to my ears. Taste? Not important. Smell? Not important. Touch? Maybe. I’ll leave a small reserve in that tank. After channeling and redirecting my sensory abilities I’m being driven toward the ground. It’s low. Is it one of those prank noise makers? Did a kid pull a genius stunt to get a free 30-minute recess? I begin to check under tables. The first table isn’t right, the noise isn’t loud enough. The second table nearby is loud. I mean LOUD. But it isn’t coming from the underside of the table. It’s even lower than that. It’s coming from the ground where all the… backpacks… are… The blue backpack on the ground. It’s coming from the blue backpack. I pick it up and the noise follows the backpack upward. It’s inside.

I don’t know if I have the legal authority to go through a child’s belongings, so Tim does the only useful thing he’s done all morning and opens the backpack up. His probable cause? It could be a bomb.

The noise is infinitely louder. He begins taking things out one by one until finally… the metronome. It’s a band kid’s metronome. It’s a kid’s metronome that they evacuated the classroom for. It’s a kid’s metronome that was the cause of the class being out on the playground as I pulled into the parking lot. It’s a metronome that they blamed on “my” wire. It’s a metronome that neither the 30 kids, nor the teacher, nor any other adult at the school bothered to put in any effort to find.

They lost an entire class period’s worth of learning over a metronome, in a child’s backpack, that had nothing to do with the Technology Department.