For Anne Laing, It's a Little Like Christmas Every Day

How did you spend your summer vacation? If you're Anne Laing, you spent it working, unpacking boxes.

Laing, a secretary at Montville High School, has been surrounded by boxes for weeks now. Boxes and boxes and boxes and more boxes.

Boxes in the office, boxes in the hallway, boxes in the back room, boxes on boxes and boxes under boxes and boxes in boxes.

Inside the boxes is everything from art supplies to gym supplies, from pens to pencils to papers, to beads, to paints, to pans, to office supplies.

Oh, and, yes, textbooks.

And then there are the surprises.

Last year was Laing's first year doing the unpacking and sorting. In one delivery arrived a large white bucket. It sat amid the other stuff, and Laing moved it here and there, lugged it from one corner of the room to the other, sat near it, right next to it, in fact, while she unpacked stuff.

Someone came in, then, after the bucket had been around for quite a while.

"Don't you know what's in that bucket?" this helpful soul asked.

Nope, Laing said.

Dead rats, the person told her. For science.

Well.

No dead rats so far this year, Laing says, or at least none that she knows about.

The stuff was ordered during the school year by teachers, staffers and administrators. The orders come in in bulk, generally. Pens ordered by three teachers, a guidance counselor and a coach might all come in the same delivery, in the same box.

Some stuff arrives specifically for individuals who have ordered it, but much comes in unsorted, Laing says. She opens all the boxes, unpacks everything, checks the orders, and sorts the items.

Then summer helpers - Montville High School students who work at the school over vacation - deliver the items.

So, that's what Anne Laing did over summer vacation. Unpacked.