Whoa, that's a long way down!

I realized the other day that I never actually wrote down my fun and exciting adventure of being on the roof of Hughes Hall. Or maybe I have and lost it. Or I lost it but you've already read it. If that's the case leave a comment and let me know where you've seen it.


But Hughes Hall. One of the oldest buildings on THE Ohio State University's campus. Hughes is one of the two buildings for the School of Music. Obviously this story is from quite a years back because at the time of this story I actually was a music major.

As a music major it should be assumed that you have to practice a lot. And if it's not assumed now you know. I don't remember how many hours a week you should practice, or I did, but it's a lot. Anyhoo. The fourth floor of Hughes hall consists merely of practice rooms. Every practice room has a piano, music stand and chair. Sometimes a mirror to make sure you're standing up straight and your hair is in place. Ok maybe not so much for hair placement but more to work on your embouchure. And if you don't know what that is I provided a nice wikipedia link for you.

So one day I was upstairs for my daily practicing ritual. Good times. When I was finished I packed up, and was headed out the door. Now, let me digress for a moment. Remember how I said Hughes is one of the oldest buildings on campus? To make the rooms "sound proof" the only extra step taken was to put two doors on the rooms. One opens inwards, the other outwards. As of my time in the music school, no updates had been made to those doors so they were about 1000 or more years old. Give or take a year or two. Because of the age, the doors can be difficult to close and/or open. And in one circumstance, not to open at all. As such was the case on one sunny afternoon. But no worries. It was just a little stuck. Let's try again. Not opening. And again. Um, the door was seriously not budging. Now what? I heard someone practicing a couple rooms over but I knew banging on the door would be pointless and who knew how long it would take for someone to walk back to where I was practicing. Great.

I had only one option. Maybe there could have been other ones but I had the idea of only one option at that time.

The window.

I was on the fourth floor but there was a pretty nice gutter that i could crawl around on to find someone to assist me to get back in the building so I could continue on with life. So out the window I went. They make that type of thing look so easy in movies! Geez. But I got out. I decided to head towards the sound of another saxophone player. Thankfully it happened to be one of my better friends in my saxophone class. I knocked on the window and seriously thought I might have scared her to death. I was rather grateful I didn't though or else I would be stuck outside in the gutter of this stupid ancient building.

I gave a two second explanation of what happened. The sooner I was in the building the better. Amazingly enough, I think, it was harder and more of a pain to get back IN the building then out. It was probably safer to be inside though so I gave up on trying not to get bruises and stuffed myself through.

Once I was inside and both my friend and I were composed I went back to the room that I had been securely locked in. It opened with no problem from the outside. That was quite annoying.

I must say though that the experience made for a very interesting, scary, yet fun story to tell.

And now you know.