PA Takeover

It's one of the best times of year. We're in May and there is light at the end of the tunnel. I've had a good year with a fun bunch of AP guys (and one poor girl). As I'm walking into the building at my usual early (6 AM) I see one of those AP guys and he shouts (really too loud), "Good Morning Mr. Welty!". Morning. He's down in the basement level of the science wing but I can see him from the stairway. I leave him there and head upstairs and think no more about the slightly off kilter encounter.

About 2 periods into the day the PA comes on. It's loud! It's playing heavy metal. It doesn't stop. UH OH. . .Not only does the morning's encounter come back to me but so does a seemingly innocent set of questions in class from weeks ago. The questions have to do with speakers and multiple speakers being wired in parallel. If someone could get at one speaker wouldn't they be able to drive all the speakers that were wired in parallel with it? Yes of course.

This is what has apparently happened. The buildings and grounds crew are running around looking but really it could be any one of hundreds of speakers. I think I have an idea but I'm smart enough to keep my mouth shut! Interestingly the teachers you'd expect to be mad about this prank are and the ones who you'd expect to think it was rather cool do. No one got hurt and after about an hour the music stopped.

Many of my fellow teachers suggested that this was the work of my AP boys. I assured them that while they were pretty smart that they didn't know a screwdriver from a hacksaw. These seemed to satisfy most and they investigated elsewhere. Of course I knew it was them but I didn't know the details until they arrived at my house at my daughter's graduation party with t-shirts that said, "Radio Free Maine East". Here's how they did it.

They found an empty locker in that basement hallway and put a lock on it. From there they managed to fish the speaker wire from a PA speaker in the ceiling of the hallway. On the morning in question they arrived early and put a CAR BATTERY, amplifier and cassette player into the locker with the output to that one speaker. As expected (taught?) that one speaker gave them access to all the speakers in one entire wing of the building. The school never figured it out. No one was punished and the equipment was removed as stealthily as it arrived.

What a sweet prank. Their 'innocent' questions to me about electricity and circuits months before were all part of the plan.