Broken In

 The news came in via text: Our school had a break-in last week. In late July, it is as empty as it ever is, with just a couple weeks to go before we fire up the engines to take it back on the road. Our custodian, who had completed the deep cleaning in June was not around to witness the event. Our principal, gearing back up to a desk full of paperwork and staffing puzzles that will be sorted out as the doors fly open to greet a new school year took the news from authorities "downtown" who were monitoring the alarm and security cameras. 

The perpetrators were described as teenagers. I would like to believe that these were some of our old students, anxious to take one last look around their school before heading off to new educational experiences. This is somehow preferable to the idea of strangers crawling into the staff lunchroom and tossing things around. 

What were they hoping to find? We no longer store the Lost Ark of the Covenant in our book room. The Crown Jewels are on loan to a middle school across town. The burglars did not seem interested in the collection of broken printers stored in a corner next to the refrigerator. And the refrigerator is currently empty of popsicles for those Friday afternoon treats. Which probably explains the rage needed to throw things about the room. They risked all that danger and potential incarceration and came away without popsicles? Of course they needed to break stuff. 

The interesting thing for me is that even though I am in the last throes of my own summer break, and would like to imagine that the furthest thing from my mind is Horace Mann Elementary, I still flinched when I read the news. My home away from home was violated. Not for the first time, but I started to piece together the world in which I might not return myself. The 2022-23 school year is slated to be the last for Horace Mann. It is possible that next July the place will be even more empty than it is currently. The broken printers will be hauled off, at last. The refrigerator, the one I got donated so that teachers could keep those aforementioned frozen treats cold when the old one passed on, will be carted away to someone else's lounge. Or used to store the tender feelings of the students, staff and family who called it their school for so many years. 

Maybe I shouldn't care so much. But I don't think that's an option.