Who is in charge, here?

Hey, El Nino! Who is in charge, here? What kind of messed-up, NON-winter is this? Why am I taking walks, in naught but a zip-up, feeling the sun on my back and catching glimpses of my shadow in the non-frosty grass!

I can hear people saying, Shhhh, you numskull! Don't remind the weather system that he forgot about winter. It's so nice, and makes for such easy driving. Pipe down!

But those people probably aren't teaching for two and a half hours in Fine Arts 305: the hottest classroom in America. When your students are already sweating and squirming, and you keep fluffing your bangs because you can feel them sticking to your forehead, and it's January--that is Not Good. In fact, it is quite dangerous. Because something like this could happen (okay, did happen. Yesterday.) :

"Kendall," they said, "It's so hot in here. Can't we open a window?" I'm reasonable, so I opened one-half of the window, but to do so required moving the curtain that was keeping the super-bright sunlight out of their eyes.

"Kendall," they said, "can you open the other half of the window so the sun won't be in our eyes?" Hmmm. Trickier. There was a bolt at the top of the window, well out of arm's reach, and I would need to get to that first. Uncertain of how to climb up, I balanced a foot on the very hot, very narrow radiator and was about to hoist, when--

"Kendall! Use a chair!" said three students, in unison, and one brought the chair to me. A good, life-preserving suggestion, probably. I balanced on the chair, turned the bolt, tugged. Tugged again. Yanked...

"It won't open, Kendall, because it's nailed shut," one student pointed to the nails at the bottom of the window. "Can we open the door to the fire escape?" I opened the door. It swung right back shut.

"Use the chair from before," someone suggested. I attempted to prop the chair half in the doorway and half on the fire escape six inches below (it's a weird building).

Then, we watched together, a hard-working, heat-beating team, as the chair fell from the doorway, crashed down onto the fire escape, slid across it, and stopped just at the edge, right before it would've fallen three stories onto the walkway below. And potentially maimed someone.

I stood very still, looking at the door, the chair, and the fire escape--door, chair, fire escape--like they were one of those story problems from the SAT that I could never do, when a student came up behind me and said, helpfully, "Last semester, we would do this." He opened the door all the way, stood the chair upright against the door, on the fire escape, and came back inside.

Which brings me back to my original question, El Nino:

Who is in charge, here? Because I'm pretty sure it's not me.

Dangerously bad at problem solving,
Kendall