All In A Day's Work

You know those cans of compressed air they sell so that you can clean out electronic equipment without taking it apart? Yes, well I ordered a bunch of them to clean out the computer keyboards here in the library. Considering they hadn't been cleaned in the two years I've had them I figured it was time to step it up and rid them of dust before the summer came along and I waited another year to get it done. So yesterday I started spraying them out and I found all manner of dirt, dust, hair, fingernails, dried boogers, and crumbs flying every which way out of those keyboards. I was more than a little disgusted; it almost made me wish I had never decided to clean.

Anyway, as I was diligently blasting air a couple of students noticed me (the air is surprisingly loud coming out of the can) and they were fascinated. Seriously, I've never seen them so enthralled in anything, not even weepuls. They were rapt with attention, their eyes never leaving the can. Then they saw all the junk flying out of the keyboards and they started cheering! They were so happy that I was cleaning with a can of air that they actually gave me a cheer. They wanted to know every detail about the air: how much was in a can, how did Endust get the air in there, did the can come with the little red spray nozzle or did I buy it separately, why did the can get freezing cold after I had sprayed it for a while? I felt like it could've been a real teaching moment. Unfortunately, I didn't know many of the answers (how do they get it in there?), so instead I made answers up about CO2 cartridges and sending people up to the Arctic Circle to catch the freezing wintry air specially for the cans. What? I couldn't disappoint those fervent eyes.

About two minutes after the wide-eyed children left a whole other troop of kids showed up demanding to see the Arctic air blasts for themselves. I knew if I didn't quell their curiosity I would end up with hordes of kids in here after school begging me to put on an Endust show for them so I tried to play it down a little, demonstrating how boring it actually was to spray out the keyboards. At that precise moment, a giant spider corpse flew out from between the keys, landed on one of the kids bare arms, and was followed by a chorus of shrieks (mostly mine) and running frantically around in circles.

I thought the kids would be traumatized enough to refrain from any further cleaning questions. Oh ho ho, was I wrong! I've heard kids that weren't even there describing it as "totally awesome" and "so scary". Apparently, the spider incident spread like wildfire and it seems every kid in the school now wants to clean computer keyboards for me.

On the bright side, I've run out of electronics to clean and I have a variety of students available to do my dirty work for me. Score.