Four Cart Pileup

One of the major pedestrian thoroughfares on the grounds of the Little College on the Hill has an electrical cord running across it from an expanse of lawn to a building. Actually, I've never traced the cord from end to end so I am making educated guesses as to the locations of the ends of this cord. How is it that this cord has been left out for weeks now? I say this based on the fact that I have never met anyone whose father did not freak out if someone touched his tools, the genus to which power cords belong. (Who else now hears the comic Louie Anderson in their head: I'm touching the tools.) Someone's father has got to be having a goat over his missing cord.

It does not lie there without repercussions. Many of the students now drag their books and school supplies and who-knows-what-all behind them in wheeled bags. Almost the entire student body runneth—er, rolleth amok. I've stopped asking students what they pack in their wheeled survival kits because they will tell me and diligently fish each item out as they run through the list. For instance, one instructor on campus requires his students to carry to class every day a hardcover collegiate level dictionary. It is required in the sense that if a student does not have the book when it is randomly requested bonus points are not awarded and harassment via verbal insults ensues. The dictionary is not such a bad thing (refer to my previous post regarding the words "sike" and "wa-la"). However, this same instructor "suggests" in the same points vs. abuse way that his students carry around a bungie cord of sufficient length so that they can strap themselves to their chairs when graphing ensues. What does a length of rubber strapping have to do with graphs you ask? If not sufficiently tied down, the excitement of graphing might have the students bouncing off the ceiling, you see. The need for wheeled bags is now apparent. Students who have not yet figured out that they deserve a shred of respect will carry around anything for a single point and to avoid being picked on in front of their peers. This is what people refer to when they say tenure is a bad thing, me thinks.

But back to the electrical cord. As I observe students progress slow to a speedbump pace because the wheels on their bag get stuck on the cord, I wonder why it is there. Why does one end seem to end at a building why the other end disappears into the ground in the middle of the lawn? My current theory is that someone in the buildings and grounds department has figured out a way to tap into the geothermic power source in the middle of the grassy knoll and is currently running the lights for the stage from said source. The option to this theory is that the juice is running the other way and the building is being used to power something underground—perhaps an Orcs weapons factory? This is obviously way less feasible.

But back to the electrical cord. Women in high heels stagger to a halt when the wheels jam. Folks in flat shoes similar stumble when their bag stops and they don't. Only we backpack-on-the-back crowd and folks in wheelchairs with rubberized wheels seem to be immune to the powers of this strand.

Who knew such a tiny thing could lead to so many questions?