A Fine How-Do-You-Do

There I was, walking across the front of my classroom, delivering a college-heavy textbook to a gal in the front row on crutches, not so much out of the kindness of my cold, cold heart, but because I let her leave it in my room so as not to carry it, and it was in my way, and I saw her come in and decided to kill two birds with one stone. Figuratively, of course.

When I looked up from my good deed, I was shocked to see Sweet Alabama Beige standing right before me.

"What are YOU doing here?" It's so seldom that another faculty member drops by, what with those needy freshmen running rampant in Newmentia since August, and us leery of leaving them unattended for an instant. Sweet Alabama Beige had prep the previous hour, though, and she was in the neighborhood.

"I just wanted you to know that a ream of paper printed out with hardly a THING on it! Just some symbols."

"Okay. But I didn't print anything. I don't print to the workroom, and I haven't copied anything for three days. Since the main Kyocera has been broken. So thanks for letting me know. But it isn't mine."

"Oh. Your name was on it."

"What was my name on? The copies? I haven't made any, and the last time I did, all mine printed out."

"When that ream of paper started shooting out, I gathered it up as it got too full, and I saw your name on the screen for that job."

"Well, I'm not sure how that happened, but I did NOT print anything."

"Come in here and I'll show you."

"I'm going that way, but it's for the bathroom, because I didn't have time last hour due to keeping an eye on my class that terrorized the sub during my jury duty."

"When you come out."

And there it was:

Yeah. I don't know what kind of wacky tobaccy Sweet Alabama Beige has been tokin' smokin', or what kind of moonshine she's been gluggin' out of an earthenware jug cocked in the crook of her elbow...but there is no way that I should have been identified as the printer of that gobbledygook.

All I can imagine is that somebody not very technologically inclined tried to email themselves some documents to go on their S L O and U O I that we worked on yesterday during our professional development, and got their fat finger on the wrong line of the printer's address book. There are several incompetents I can imagine whose first name is close in the alphabet to Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's first name. Mrs. Not-A-Cook being one of them, and her just this morning lamenting that she had lost EVERYTHING from her S L O that she thought she entered yesterday.

My name was on the job? Methinks that is a negative.

Unless, of course, computers have already taken over the world, and they are conspiring with the universe against Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.