Phones in the Ceiling

Two years ago I became a twenty-six year old college freshman. As I sat down in my first class, settled in, and looked over a sea of baby faced eighteen years old’s. I was forced to take a moment and figure out how I ended up missing the curve on attending college at the “correct” age. I mulled over the litany of jobs I had instead of pursuing a higher education. Lots of landscaping. Washing dishes. Lots of waiting tables. Getting berated by angry customers over the phone at a call center. Helped build a cabin. Delivered sandwiches for Jimmy Johns. Was an apprentice to the worlds most grizzled cabinet maker. And even fell out of the sky for Uncle Sam. A litany of jobs, I tell you. I began to think back even further than my disorganized resume and dive back into my career as a high schooler. And while sifting through all of these memories comprised of the troubles and fucked up situations I found myself in as a young man, there was one outlier.   

 

By the time I was entering my sophomore year of high school I had already attended seven different schools. We weren’t a military family. We were simply a very unstable family. But I digress. Every school year prior to this one had terrified me. Switching schools was always accompanied with a sense of anxiety. Switching schools and making new friends is incredibly difficult when you’re the fat kid. And it proves to be even harder when you’re a fat emo kid. There’s very little sympathy in this world for an overweight kid in a My Chemical Romance t shirt. But this year, sophomore year was my fucking year. 

 

During my freshman year of high school I was introduced to wrestling. I was also introduced to something even more profound, the concept of cutting weight. I was a fat kid no longer. And I was ready to fuck shit up at my new school, Colorado Springs Christian School. Which is an interesting mindset to have when entering the house of God but hindsight being what it is, it makes sense. 

 

Fast forward to the middle of my junior year. I have lived up to my goal. I have exceeded fucking shit up, and I was wreaking havoc. But it should be noted that causing a ruckus at a private Christian school was not difficult. Especially when I came from a lifelong adventure of sharpening my teeth in the public school system. If I wanted to gain attention in terms of being a troublemaker at a public school, I was competing with kids that did not give a singular fuck. I was only halfway crook back then, I was shook. You can’t compete with the comedic sensibilities of a kid that started driving himself to school in the eighth grade and eats mushrooms in the parking lot during study hall. But at a Christian school that was largely comprised of kids who had never seen an R-rated movie, I was Eddie Murphy RAW to these sheltered kids. And my crowning achievement of high school debauchery came in the form of a prank pulled during 4^th period English class. 

 

Mrs. Borkert’s 4th period Junior English class was a shit sandwich. I still believe that whoever put that particular roll call of students together for that class had it out for that poor woman. The class was a volatile mixture of three cliques of students: cute girls, boys that would do anything to impress these girls, and a few student warriors that unsuccessfully tried to combat our antics in an effort to actually learn anything that year. From 11:00-12:00 every single day that class was ran by the students. But right before Christmas break Mrs. Borkert reminded her unmanageable gaggle of ill-behaved students that she was still the gatekeeper that would be the deciding factor on whether or not we retake Junior English. So, the majority of the class was prepared to take these next couple class periods very seriously. I did not find myself in that group. In fact, this kid named David and I that felt like this was the opportunity to really make some noise. Sometimes big laughs require a little risk. 

 

We hatched this idea of placing our cell phones in the classroom ceiling, giving everyone in the class our phone numbers, encouraging them to call us for the whole period, and watching as Mrs. Borkert lost her marbles when she realized that she couldn’t find the phones. But we banked on her realizing they were in the ceiling at some point. We figured we would get our wrists slapped and everyone would realize it was a prank. That was a poorly placed bet. 

 

Initially, our plan went off without a hitch. Mrs. Borkert was conveniently late to class, giving David and I ample time to hide our cell phones in the ceiling tiles above our desks. Everyone had our numbers, and they were ready to start dialing as if they were participating in the worlds dumbest telethon. Mrs. Borkert finally showed up and started passing out our exams. She instructs the class to be quiet until everyone has completed the test. And for the first time in months, sweet unbothered silence existed in her classroom. Until Jay-Z began spitting bars from the ceiling stiles. Almost immediately following Jay-Z’s verse, Tech N9ne began chipping in on this bizarre compilation. It was the mash up that no one wanted.  You must understand this story happened in 2009. Ringtones were all the rage. 

 

Mrs. Borkert calmly placed her book down and asked us to silence our phones.

 

Instead the ringing ensued for the next 45 minutes. At the end of that 45 minutes was Mrs. Borkert’s threshold for bullshit. And David and I had successfully hurdled right the hell over that. 

 

Mrs. Borkert was not angry, she was downright incandescent. I probably learned the word incandescent from one of her countless vocabulary tests. So, in a roundabout way she helped write this story. Thanks B.

 

She threw down the book she was reading. She began shouting, “Where is it? Where is it?” 

In a truly hysteric fashion. She was ripping books off the shelves as she was aggressively searching for the phones. This was funny at first. Some might say we achieved the desired effect of pulling a prank on our teacher. Then she really lost her shit, and it was not funny anymore. She began emptying our back packs out onto the floor.  She was the angriest I had ever seen a teacher. It was right then I realized she was only human, and I had pushed her to the edge. She had lost her mind and it was my fault. 

 

David and I hatched an additional plan to break into the classroom and recover our phones during chapel. Chapel was our weekly Church service that was always held on Wednesday afternoons. As if we weren’t already playing with our theological well beings enough by simply behaving like absolute shit heads in the house of the Lord on the regular, we were going to ditch a midday church session with our lord and savior to technically commit a little crime known as “breaking and entering”. We probably could have used a little dose of Jesus that day, but our priorities were otherwise arranged. Getting ourselves out of trouble was far more important than learning the gospel. It’s funny how that happens when you make church mandatory. Yet again I digress. 

 

I was shaking the door handle to Mrs. Borkert’s classroom like I was going to rip it off the damn hinges. I was beginning to panic. The classroom was empty, and our phones were still ringing. My phone number had been spread around the entire school at this point. The prank had left the classroom. People in other grades were calling me. “Who the fuck is calling us? You should be in Chapel!” I screamed at the empty classroom. See, the plan David and I had concocted had lacked contingency. Contingency for complex things like door locks. Of course she would lock us out. 

 

It was time to plan another way out. 

 

Shortly after we hit the drawing board, David retrieved his phone by some type of dumb luck, but I was not so fortunate.

 

I had no luck getting my phones back and that was not for a lack of trying. I am not shitting you when I tell you that I opened up our US History textbooks to the constitution. And like the shittiest attorneys on the planet I searched for some kind of legislative protection under which I could skate out of this one. As it turns out there is little to nothing in the Constitution that references telephones in ceilings and the corresponding rights afforded to those that placed the telephones up there. 

 

The prank ended up taking up a life of its own and carried on for the rest of the school day.

 

My phone rang in this woman’s ceiling without ceasing for the next three hours. But I finally met my damnation at the hands of the honors English students. See, there is no more cutthroat specimen on the planet than an honors student at a private Christian institution. Mrs. Borkert knew this all too well. She offered 20 extra credit points to any honors student that wrote the name of the student responsible for the phone in the ceiling. These children would have fed their parents to the devil if it would have positively affected their GPA. I was fucked. They all ratted on me. 

 

But she still had no idea where the phone was in her ceiling. She had driven the final nail into me, but my prank continued on and on. 

 

Until she had finally had enough. 

 

She knew it wasn’t a bomb in her ceiling. But that’s exactly what she told the security guard at my school. 

 

Mrs. Borkert had significantly raised the stakes. 

 

She reported the “bomb threat” to Mr. Evans.

 

Mr. Evans was the school’s security guard.

 

Mr. Evans was thankfully not convinced that there was indeed a bomb in Mrs. Brokert’s ceiling. His disbelief was rooted in her school wide reputation for unwarranted and hysteric fits of tears. And that reputation surprisingly existed long before I ever walked the hollowed grounds of Colorado Springs Christian School. Every time that woman saw a bible she would bawl her eyes out. That leads to a whole lot of crying when the foundation upon which you work is in fact the Bible. And thank god for her tearful reputation because that caused Mr. Evans to investigate the crime scene himself opposed to immediately calling the police. And he found a cell phone belonging to one, Javan Reed Bair. Prior to his discovery, Mr. Evans and I had never met. 

 

“Which one of you is Javan Bair?” A thunderous voice shouted from the edge of the wrestling room. I had made it all the way to wrestling practice before they finally found my ass. “That would be me.” I responded as I turned and saw a man that was built like a fucking double wide trailer. Prior to his time as a high school security guard, Mr. Evans was a member of a SWAT team and a personal bodyguard for the one and only Will Smith. He looked as though anabolic steroids took a human form and grew a head. Furthermore he did not look pleased to make my acquaintance. “Come with me!” He shouted.

 

As we were walking up the staircase he asked me a simple question. “Did you lose your phone today, son?” To which I simply replied “Yes, sir.” He asked a follow up question. “Any idea where you lost it, son?” I answered, “In the ceiling, sir.” To which he replied, “At least you’re honest.” 

 

I followed him into his office. He sat at his desk and gestured for me to take the seat directly in front of him. I sat down and on my left side was my Vice Principal, on my right was the Principal, and in the corner of the room sat an old man who I had never seen before this moment. My phone was on the center of Mr. Evans desk. I am not embellishing when I tell you it was still ringing. “I cannot legally access your phone, but I am as serious as a heart attack when I say that I am going to freak out if I hear it ring again. Turn it off.” Mr. Evans told me. I turned my phone off and immediately felt the heaviness of the room that the silence somehow amplified. The silence was quickly broken as my Vice Principal started screaming at me and waving a handwritten essay in my face. An essay I had written about being a better student in the future, solely because it was a form of punishment for being a shithead of a student two days prior. Once she had finished yelling, the Principal informed me that the old man praying in the corner of the office was the founder of the school. He had not felt the need to come to campus in nearly a decade. But he was “deeply troubled” by my behavior. So it was truly an honor that I was able to bring him back to his school. 

 

“Do you know what you have to do now?” Mr. Evans asked me. “You need to call your father and tell him what you did.” He handed me the receiver to the phone on his desk and I dialed my Dads number. My dad is usually a very matter of the fact kind of man. But his comedic timing accidentally flourished when he answered the phone. “Who is this?” He asked. “It’s Javan. I’m calling you from the security guards office.” A brief moment of silence passed and then my father asked, “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to call you all day!” “Uh, I put my phone in the ceiling.” Another pause on the other end of the phone. “Son, I have no idea what that means…” 

 

Mr. Evans took the phone and explained everything. The phone, the ceiling, Mrs. Borkert, the notional bomb threat. There were no beans left to be spilled. 

 

“Alright, we’ll I’ll come and pick him up after wrestling practice and his mother and I will get this handled.” Mr. Evans thanked my father for his time and hung up the phone. 

 

The Vice Principal protested me going back to wrestling practice. She instead advocated that I be expelled immediately. 

 

Like clockwork my wrestling coach had now entered the discussion. While the adults were deliberating my fate, I sat out in the hallway. 

 

What felt like one hundred years had passed. Then Coach came out of the office and told me to walk with him. “They’re not going to kick you out, yet.” He reassured me. “You’re in a lot of trouble though. And I am going to work you to death for an extra session at the end of every practice so you can learn a lesson. In addition, you and only you will be cleaning the mats for a while.” “Yes, coach.” I replied as I started to cry. It wasn’t the punishment that disheartened me, it was the fact that I was in a perpetual state of trouble and it was beginning to scare me. “I want you to gather the team on the center of the mat and apologize for acting the way you did while being a member of this team.” Coach explained further. I sucked the tears back inside and prepared to walk into the wrestling room. Before I could cross the threshold, Coach grabbed my shoulder and said something that will live with me for the rest of my existence. “Cheer up man. I know you’re in trouble, but between you and I, that prank you pulled is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. If we had cell phones in high school, I would have done the exact same thing.” 

 

This memory rushed back to me as I sat in this classroom on my first day as a college freshman waiting for class to start. I took another look at the sea of baby faced children. I no longer felt apprehensive or as if I had showed up a bit too late to the game. Instead, I felt motivated by recollecting on the instances of poor decision making and downright bad luck that got me here. I now had an opportunity to see what being a successful student really felt like and I was not going to let it go to waste this time. And looking back on that volatile instance with the phone in the ceiling gave me new insight on an old story. Sure, that small prank may have been the first instance in a long line of self-destructive behavior that landed me in my precarious “Billy Madison” situation. But when I really look back on it, I think to myself “That prank you pulled is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard of. And I would still have done the exact same thing.”