The Principal’s Office

It may come as a surprise to the dozen MT.Net readers, but I was a founder of the A/V Club. Yep. Yours truly was an O.G. : Original Geek.

The highlight of my A/V geekness occured about twenty-one years ago. My family had just moved to Charlotte, and I was a lonely geek in a world with far fewer geeks than now. I decided that sitting in homeroom at Quail Hollow Junior High was about the most boring thing I could possibly endure, so I volunteered for a mission.

Each morning, the face of the principal, Charles Dannelly, would appear (in some form or another) on the ancient black and white televisions throughout the school. When an opening came up to run the video for his show, one of my teachers recommended me. Viewing this as my ticket to escape homeroom hell, I agreed.

My job was to drag some stage lights and this primitive black and white vacuum-tube video camera out of a storeroom, hook up it and the microphones, and film Dannelly as he spoke. Another student (whose name escapes me now) was my partner.

The A/V stuff was old hat to me, as I’d been wired pretty much from the day I was born. What was really hard was keeping a straight face as Dannelly went off on his usual morning tirade.

The man would pick the strangest topics to talk about, some so off the wall that my partner and I (and likely, the rest of the school) would be left scratching our heads long afterwards. This was live TV, too! Unlike blogs, he had no safety net and would often go off on a tangent with no means to get himself back to a proper closing statement.

One topic was about kids who were “nice” one minute, and “nasty” the other. I forgot the gist of the message (if there ever was one), but his repeating “nice-nasty, nice-nasty” over and over again will probably stay with me the rest of my life.

Stuff like this made my morning interesting, compared to homeroom, to say the least. I only wish we had recorded his tirades. We had this sony Betamax recorder, but I don’t think we ever used it for anything but playing the National Anthem tape.

As for Dannelly, I remember thinking two things as I was filming him:

a) he craves the camera, and
b) he’s certifiably nuts.

So, where does a certifiably nuts school principal go when he’s outgrown his junior high school? To the Charlotte City Council, that’s where. His name is on the wall of the Charlotte Coliseum.

What happens when Charlotte is too small a pond for this big fish? How about promoting him to the State Senate? Dannelly’s been there for five terms now. He’ll probably be there for many more (perhaps I may work with him again?)

What reminded me of him was a recent blurb in the paper about his support of a bill requiring kids 80 pounds or less or less than 8 years old to sit in a child seat in the car. While I think this is just another case of the government assuming it can raise my child better than I can, it was interesting to be reminded of Dannelly’s morning antics.

The principal’s office is now the State Senate. Who’da thunk it?