Speaker phones are the devil

Of late I've grown accustomed to using the speaker feature on my school phone. It's great for those times when kids check out books and/or the printer runs out of paper. My hands are free and I don't have the concern of dropping the phone off my shoulder and onto the hard surfaces around me.

So when the phone rang today around lunch--our busiest time, I hit the speaker button and continued doing whatever it was that I had been doing before it rang.

"Good afternoon. Library," I said.

"Mrs. Reid?" It was our zany English teacher, Mr. King.

Now a few moments before I had asked some of the kids to quiet down--an unusual move on my part, but one of the girls was yelling loudly enough for the adjoining hallways to catch every word. (She was talking to a teacher.) About 10-15 people were in the library and all but three of them were students.

AND a couple minutes before, I had also sent the newest booklist for the Literary Gala to all of the English teachers.

These two factors combined with not ever knowing what may proceed out of Mr. King's mouth should have been enough to make me pick up the phone, regardless, but I am a slow learner.

"Mrs. Reid, this is Mr. King. Uh...I noticed that The Time-Traveler's Wife is on the Gala list. Who's leading it?"

"Mrs. Harper," I replied.

I heard a groan of what I interpreted to be disappointment.

"Why?" I asked. "Did you want to lead the discussion on it?"

"Uh...no."

The crowd around me was being amazingly respectful. I could have heard Mr. King if I'd had the speaker volume down all the way--which, of course, I didn't.

"Uh...I thought I'd call because--well, it's a really good book, but--"

I reached for the phone. Too late.

"...the main character has sex with himself."

I chose THEN to grab the phone.

The kids were wonderful. I heard a few snorts and I saw some shoulders bouncing, but most seemed not to know how to react. Mr. Fryman, a fellow who had my mother in Sunday School class, looked at me like, "What are you promoting now?"

"Uhh...Mr. King. I had you on speaker phone."

"You had me on speaker phone?" He let out a nervous chuckle.

"Yeah. Good news is that I think I have a bunch of kids who want to read it now."

I related the story to Sharon V., another English teacher, after we attended a meeting and she howled. She called a little bit later with some news.

"Take me off speaker phone," was the first thing she said.