I Know Why the Paged Word Flings

Okay. The title should actually be, "I Know Why the Paged Word is Flung." That doesn't have quite the same ring, now does it? Sometimes, ya gotta sacrifice proper grammar for creativity. And proper syntax as well.

Did you ever need a copy of something in crisp laser ink, and print it from your classroom laptop to the copy room printer? Yeah. Me neither. But I know of people who have. Not at my place of employment, of course. But those pages you hypothetically print are usually not waiting for you in the print tray when you go to retrieve them. I'm about to let you in on a little secret. Shh...here's what goes on in that copy room when you are not around.

The minute that old Kyocera hums to life, all manner of gremlins snap to alert. A student, perhaps, who has ducked into enemy territory to surreptitiously cop a pop from the machine. "Oh, what's this? A fresh copy of tomorrow's test? I think I do not care for that. I'll just take every other page. There. Nobody digs through the trash in here."

Maybe a colleague is running copies when your document lines up in the queue. "Oh, no she didn't! Not on my watch! I didn't fill four drawers with four thousand sheets of paper for some freeloader to print on. Clear! That'll fix it. Come on up and look for your copies. Heh, heh, heh."

It might be the week that orders are due from one of two bookselling vendor displays that have been set up in the copy room. Which means a cafeteria worker may wander in and decide to copy a few recipes. Not for school, of course. Are you kidding? For home. "Hey! What's this coming out of the machine? I didn't copy that. Whoops! Better sort through and make sure my recipes aren't mixed up with it. I'll just put these over here. And that one there. Gosh! There's another one! Nobody's going to miss this. They can print it again."

What if it's the hour with six teachers on plan period? There they sit, enjoying some leftover red velvet cake that somebody brought in for some mysterious reason instead of keeping it home to enjoy, all giddy with fifty minutes of free time, hopped up on sugar, looking for an outlet for their daily stresses. "Do you hear what I hear? Printing! Somebody's printing from their room! Don't you hate that? Copier might jam! They'll expect us to clear it! No way, no how! Get it!" A half dozen cronies fling your papers willy-nilly, to and fro, high and low, floor to ceiling, back and forth. They wallow on them, stomp them, make a mini-paper-leaf-pile and take turns jumping into it, kick through them like crispy fallen foliage, then return them to the paper tray.

And you wonder why you can't find one clear set of six pages that you printed two hours earlier.

Hypothetically.