Wednesday, June 01, 2005
A GRADUATION DAY EXPERIENCE
A few weeks ago I was privileged to attend the Graduation Ceremony for a young lady in our church. She graduated cum laude from Cincinnati Christian University. The ceremony was held in the College Gym. It was comfortable and there was room for everyone in attendance. The sound system was very good for both music and speaking.
It was an excellent service with good music and interesting and intelligent short speeches by three graduates. One of the outstanding features of the ceremony was the excellent way one of the professors read the Scripture. In my opinion it is seldom that you hear Scripture read well. This man did an excellent job in that department.
After the ceremony had concluded people were just leaving the stands. I had gone down on the floor to talk to someone. We had just begun our conversation when without warning the lights went out. It was somewhat of a shock. We all thought they would come right on again or there would be back up lighting. Neither occurred.
When it became apparent there was not going to be any lights, two impressive things happened. First, no one panicked. There were no screams or stampede to the exits. (Even the exit lights were out.)
The second occurrence took me by surprise. It seemed that everyone in that large crowd who had a cell phone turned it on! Most of them weren’t calling anyone. Apparently they were just using their screen as light! My cell is an older style with a very dim screen that provides virtually no light. But it was interesting to see everyone “light up”. Pretty soon we all headed for the exit nearest to us. It was funny to observe people trying to meet up with their family and/or friends in the dark. Believe it or not, it was easier to do than I would have thought. Eventually everyone got out doors to the light and found their friends and family.
I never did hear why the lights went out. I only learned that they were out over that entire area of the city. I suppose they were off an hour or more at least.
It is hard to believe that a large public building on a good-sized college campus could be constructed without any type of backup lighting in case of such an occurrence. But that building has no backup lights. I am thankful that no one panicked that there were no harmful results.
Jim
posted by jim 3:10 PM 0 comments
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