A pipe burst down the hall from my office last week, which was a great excuse to take the whole week off. I had a couple meetings, but I canceled them. Turns out, “Sorry, I have to cancel our appointment today, a pipe burst next to my office,” is a great way to get out of just about anything. People seemed more sympathetic to that than if I had told them I was sick or dealing with a family tragedy. “A burst pipe? How awful!”
When I got to campus yesterday, it looked like a scene form E.T. There were wires and tubes coming out of doors and windows, plastic tent-like structures blocking the hallways, caution tape and barricades everywhere, and several overweight men holding clipboards and coffee mugs standing around looking at nothing in particular. A news van was parked on the sidewalk, and as I walked by a guy holding a microphone said, “You want to be on TV?” A fat kid behind me who looked like he was wearing his little sister’s UNH sweatshirt said, “Sure!”
Fortunately, my office was unaffected, except for a nice musty aroma. I’m sure in a few days my books will be curled at the edges and caked in mold. I stopped by the graduate director’s office to ask for money for my upcoming research conference. His office was one of the four that were ruined, so he set up a make-shift office on the second floor. He was slouching in a wooden chair staring out the window, arms dangling at his side, hands almost touching the floor, with several boxes of soggy books at his feet. He apologized that he hadn’t gotten around to my funding request and pointed with his thumb, still staring out the window, to the desk behind him piled high in paper. “As you can see,” he said. “I’m operating old school here.”
I told him I had heard about the flooding and that all the computers were ruined.
“I don’t care about that,” he said. He lightly kicked a box. “It’s all of this. I would love to just throw these books away, but some of them were first editions. Some were signed by my friends who are dead now.”
I sat a moment and stared at the boxes of books. I tried to think of something sympathetic to say, but all I could muster was, “So...should I resubmit the funding request?”
