Mrs. Hillbillly Mom. The Freakin' Genius.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not known for her electronic acumen.

As the #1 son says, "Technology is not your friend." I am the bull in the china shop of intricate electronic systems. I know how to plug a device into the wall outlet. I know how to push a power button. Anything else is taxing my limited knowledge base. It took me thirty minutes to figure out how to re-connect both mouse and number pad to my laptop, after somebody so kindly hooked them up wrong overnight.

From the start, my classroom speakers had issues with some strange kind of feedback. They were connected to my towering tower of accessories by #1 at the start of the school year in which they were installed. So I know if they were ever going to work right, they would work right. He's a wiz at that stuff. According to #1, and one just like him the next year, the problem lies in the amplifier box. I just call it the black box that sits on the bottom of my tower. It has a knob for something I do not know, a knob for volume when playing the VCR or DVD, and a knob for volume when playing sound through my school laptop. Both wizards went over that rig with a fine-toothed comb. Both declared: "Your speakers are crap!" Both suggested the only option was to turn that unknown knob up to MAX, to control feedback. It sort of worked a little bit.

Several weeks ago, the buzzing of the speakers became intolerable. Student eardrums would have been safer on a runway at Chicago O'hare, right under a 747 engine, than in my classroom. I gave up. I showed the educational DVDs, or the holiday movie, by playing it on my computer. Not an optimal situation, because then I cannot accomplish other work on the computer. And when a student grade is requested, I cannot look it up without stopping the video, because I certainly can't project the gradebook program onto the screen for all to view. Confidentiality, you know.

With today being the last day of the semester, I was certain grade information would be needed. So I started a holiday movie in my DVD player. Oh, the tympanity! So horrific was the buzzing that the audio of the movie was barely discernible. One young lass shouted, "My ears are bleeding!" I would have chastised her for being overly dramatic, but I fear that in this instance, she was accurate.

Fed up with the whole shoddy equipment debacle, I turned my amplifier around. Just slightly, though, lest I dislodge the frayed copper wire ends that run into it from the long wire that snakes down the wall. Fed up. I looked at the four cables hooked into that amplifier. Just as I do every time the speakers have issues. Like when I check them all to see if they're completely plugged in. And they always are. Fed up. I grabbed the nearest red one, and yanked.

The buzzing ceased completely. A cheer of admiration went up. "You FIXED it!"

I will eagerly be checking the mail for a union card from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.