pant, pant

We have been flying low for finals week, but finally I can throttle back a bit. Lots of on-line classes coming in for tests and of course some of the computers pick the high-stress time to fail. Amd of course, some of the student pick the high-stress time to melt down. I set up one fellow, rather large with wild gray hair, and he began his test. Everytime someone else came into the room he would glare poisonously at them for several long seconds, sigh gustily, and get back to his work. About half an hour into the day he came storming out of the room, slapped his hands down on the counter-top, fixed me piercingly with a gimlet gaze and announced, "I have a mental illness and I find this constant coming and going intolerably distracting!"

The little simian in the back of my brain begins screaming, "omigawd, I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die!" I pulled a blanket over his head, pulled up my virtual socks and said, "I'm so sorry. It's finals week, so there will be a lot people coming and going all day long. Let me see what I can do to make things quieter for you."

He blinked twice. I could almost see his successful coping mechanism pulling tha blanket over his own inner simian. "OH." he said, in a much calmer tone. "Oh. Thank you."

I checked and told him, "OK, I see we have a private room available untill 10 this morning. Would that work for you?"

An entire cast of characters struggled behind his eyes, but mister rationality won. He graciously accepted my suggestion, finished his test, and thanked me quite cordially on the way out. I suggested that he should reserve the private room for himself everytime he needed to test with us, and he thought that was a very good idea.

And I think it's crowded in MY head!