Nuclear What???

I came in to work, and stuck to my door, and the doors of all my colleagues, was a red bulletin announcing that I had failed to submit the extremely toxic and unknown substance survey sheet for my office.

The paper continued that today was the deadline and if I continued in my failure, school authorities would have no choice but to enter my room by force and confirm that there were no extremely toxic and unknown substances on the premises.

I wondered what the hell this was about and really had no idea. I remembered seeing a couple of e-mails regarding extremely toxic and unknown substances, but had disregarded them, believing they were intended more for the chemistry and physics departments. The most toxic material I deal with is the subjunctive.

Imagine my surprise when, after digging the e-mails out, I read that in Building 19, which is being reconstructed from its current sullen, concrete structure to a brighter more ecological design that still pays homage to its Stalinist design roots, a worker had literally stumbled across a container of unregistered, uncontrolled, nuclear material.

This had prompted the immediate, comprehensive, self-administered survey. I quickly wrote down that I had no extremely toxic and unknown substances in my office. I walked across campus where my completed form was solemnly accepted without confirmation or question.

As I was turning to leave, one of the men stopped me and told me that I was responsible for one other room used by the English teachers. I have never been in the room, don't have a key and the idea of digging out the key, confirming the absence of extremely toxic and unknown substances suddenly seemed burdensome so I just told them that there was nothing in there either. They seemed OK with that and checked it off their list.

I hope Al-Kaeda is not on campus.