Cus...Cus...GUS!

Sometimes, like a simple game of Duck, Duck, Goose, a scenario unfolds that warms the cockles of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's cold, cold heart.

Wednesday I was sitting at my work desk, doing something I can't quite remember, but I am sure it was WORK, when I looked up to see two invaders storm through the door of my classroom. The first through the portal was Little Banty Hoosier. He thinks he's in charge around here. It was his idea to lock the thermostats so that teachers can't control their own roasting temperature. Behind him was GUS. He's a cohort of Cus, though I'm not sure how much cohorting is actually going on, what with the two of them mixing like oil and water.

Little Banty Hoosier made a beeline for my thermostat. It took him about five steps. GUS made it in one. There is no love lost between Mrs. Hillbilly Mom and Little Banty Hoosier. He is like a gas station attendant telling me that I need the air in my tires changed, and he'll do it for only $20. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not suffer being thought a fool gladly. So she called out to him, "Oh, I see you're here to make the room hotter now that the kids are coming back." GUS snickered.

LBH pointed a black thingy that looked like an old cordless phone at my thermostat. "See there? This one too! It's all gone. Back to factory settings. I wish I could catch who's doing this." GUS looked at me over the top of LBH's head. GUS raised one eyebrow, yanked his head toward LBH, and winked.

"I haven't touched it since last year. I wasn't even here the week school was out. I don't know how to mess with it. I only move it two degrees like you say I can." Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was not going to have her face splashed across the school TV network as a suspect.

LBH flipped open the thermostat's door and fiddled a minute. "I don't know how I'm going to reprogram. I'll have to read the book. Let's go see the rest of them on this hall. Do you think Cus has been doing it?"

HO HO HO HO HO!

GUS shoved his arms inside the front flap of his overalls as he followed LBH out my door. "I...don't know!"

I could hear them next door, LBH having a conniption at yet another reprogrammed thermostat. After a while, LBH and GUS went up the hall past my door again. And then I heard Cus wheeling the mop bucket that way. I guess Cus had been outside, or in a lab where the guys hadn't noticed during their inspection. It all went down right outside my door. Yep. The poo hit the blower.

"Hey! Cus! Have you been resetting the thermostats this summer?"

"No...why would I do that? I would never do anything like that without calling you to ask." Let the record show that Cus IS a big rule-follower when it comes to official procedures. "Besides, I don't even know how they work."

And then, right then, I stopped feeling a little bit sorry for Cus getting blindsided. "Do you think it's the TEACHERS?" Oh, no you didn't, Cus! Oh, no you DIDN'T!

"Nah. There's too many that's been changed. I just wanted to make sure you don't mess with them."

"Oh, I won't. Don't even know how." Cus went forward with the rolling yellow industrial mop bucket.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not a snitch. And Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not have a WAYBACK machine to see who reconfigured the building's thermostats. However...

I think it's pretty obvious that GUS is the one who changed the temps to make the job of hauling every item of furniture out of every room in order to strip and wax the floors more humanly comfortable.

GUS rocks.