The Leprechaun and the Lights

I might have had a leprechaun in my music room on St. Patrick's Day.

 

The kindergartners swore they saw one hiding behind my desk, running out the door, and climbing up the instrument shelves.

They would gasp, point, and exclaim, "I just saw a leprechaun!"

 

The day after St. Patrick's Day, I found a bunch of green and gold glitter on top of one of my drums. 

 

I'm not joking. I don't know how it got there. A student? The custodian tracking it in from another classroom? The amount of it and location was too subtle to be a teacher playing a prank.

It was a fun anecdote to tell my students. I learned that 4th graders still take leprechauns pretty seriously. The 5th graders were a little more skeptical but kind of freaked out. The 6th graders just stared blankly at me or rolled their eyes.

 

 

Right after I told the 1st graders the glitter story, the lights in my room flickered a few times and went out. They got very quiet. A few students whimpered. 

"Uh oh," I thought, "I traumatized them."

 

A few weeks earlier, the lights at my school had been completely rewired. I was pretty sure it wasn't a bulb problem but somehow related to the new light system. 

 

I tried to turn on the lights a few more times. One light worked while the others flickered like a disco ball. I guess that's appropriate for the music room . . .

 

The custodian had to check all the bulbs, which involved climbing a ladder and taking panels off my ceiling around the entire room. I took the 1st graders outside instead of teaching my rhythm lesson and sang a few Irish folk songs on guitar. They seemed less traumatized by the time class was over.

 

I taught in the dark that day and the next day, waiting for the electricians to show up. A 5th grade teacher gave me a desk lamp so I could see enough to do my paperwork.

 

The light guys showed up after the kids left for spring break. They climbed up in my ceiling, and I heard them say things like, “This is a mystery."  "What’s our next resort?" and (to me) "I hope I’m not making you dizzy.”

 

Was there really a leprechaun? Or maybe the music room ghost was making a comeback. I hadn't heard from it in a while.

 

After about an hour and a half and on a whim, one of the electricians jiggled a couple of wires in the single working light, and all of a sudden the lights came back on. 

 

“Whoa! Those are my lights!” I said.

“That’s a good sign,” he said, sounding a little relieved. 

He let go of the wires, and the lights went out again.

It turned out the light that worked was shorting out all the others. Once they had diagnosed the problem, they were able to fix it pretty quickly. 

 

I guess it wasn't a ghost or a leprechaun.

 

But what about all the glitter?

 

 

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