...wow...
I mean, talk about things that you think will always happen to somebody else.........
There was a gun threat at my school today. My brother's friend Julian called us at about 7:15 this morning. Then he called the police and Joss called the school on the way home. The school told Joss that they already knew about it, and that they were gonna take care of it.
When we got there, there was a huge line of kids waiting to get in - they were checkind IDs really carefully and looking through bags. Mr. Lipsky came out with a camera, which he handed off to me. At this point, I thought that Joss, Julian, my mom, and I were the only ones who knew about this other than the police, so I was a little freaked out, but Lipsky knew what was happening.
I filmed the kids in line, and he said,
"I think someone should have a camera all day, too."
I said "I'll keep it. Um, but what for?"
"In case anything out of the ordinary happens."
I think my eyes popped out of my head. "That's CODE, man, and I don't like where it's headed!"
'No, I mean in case there's a lockdown or something."
"Oh..."
So I went on filming, then went to the library for Spanish first period. Only six kids were there out of a class of around 28. I had left the camera on a shelf behind me, but for some weird reason I felt totally unsafe without it, so I went and grabbed it and put it right in front of me.
Apparently everybody knew what was going on, lots of people since last night, so everyone was freaked out.
Ms. Pokorny said "I don't know any more about what's going on than you do, but for the next forty minutes, you're safe with me."
In math 2nd period, almost everyone was there, and we were all freaked out. Ms. Walker said "Look, you guys. I'm a big scaredy cat. If there were anything to be scared of, I'd be scared." She did not seem scared.
At one point we heard running and screaming from the room above us (this turned out to be Mastrota's seventh graders acting out a scene from Bleeding Kansas) and we all froze and went absolutely silent. Ms. Walker didn't hear it, but we all thought that the people less then ten feet away from us might be getting killed. We begged and begged, and finally Ms. Walker locked the door, and David slid a desk up in front of it. A few kids moved to sit in the back.
At the end of the period, Ms. Walker said "i'm glad nothing happened, but I did have a plan." When we asked her what it was, she told us, "I was gonna have you all get in the corner and lie down, and then I'd stack all the desks around you like a fortress!" This is probably way funnier if you knew Ms. Walker, who is a short, chubby, glasses-wearing, spacey little woman with a nasal little voice. It really helped lighten things up, in a weird way.
People calmed down a lot after that. A lot more people showed up to school, but a lot of people went home, too.
Over the course of the day, there were SO many rumors. There were only a few constant things - That a certain 9th grader named Brian was the one who was supposed to bring the gun, and the Principal did tell us that, because of locker searches, another kid was arrested for having 'a forbidden item' (as far as I heard, brass knuckles that he used as a belt buckle) in his locker.
Things were basically normal after then. After school I filmed the principal reading a letter that he was sending home to everybody, and I directed the filming of the show, since Peter didn't come to the taping, and Mr. Lipsky was getting ready for Grease tomorrow,and it went well. The guys and I were joking around a lot. We were looking at the footage of this Air Force rock band that come and played at our school, the female member of which went out into the audience and kissed our friend Nick (aka Squirrel) on the cheek. The more we watched, the more it became obvious that, wow, she was a slut. You know how sometimes you can just tell? I said
"Man, they always talk about gays in the military, but they never talk about sluts in the military."
To which Will responded "Yeah, well, they should, because they're ABUNDANT, and something has to be done about it!" My response to which was near death by laughter. We all took to randomly shouting 'Air Force slut!!!!'
Then we all started saying "If we're all alive when the show airs tomorrow, when we see the slut, we all have to say 'Air Force slut!'" It was quite morbidly funny.
As much as I felt better later on, I'm still freaked out. Loads of kids are planning on staying home tomorrow. All day I was flashing back to two things - the first was the time last year when I brought THREE guns into school for the show. In a big gun case. Making no attempt to hide it. And nobody even looked at me twice. They were fake guns of course, but you couldn't tell that by looking at them, and they were in a big gun case. I was thoroughly expecting to have to call Doctor Zatorski over to back me up that yeah, the guns were for the show - but nothing. Since then I couldn't help but think that if somebody wanted to bring a real gun into school meaning to hurt someone, I don't think they would necessarily be stopped.
The second thing was a conversation I had with Peter a few weeks ago about how horrible it must be to get shot and whether we would take a bullet for someone, and who we would do it for. I kept thinking, all day, "Am I gonna get shot today? Is this the day I'm gonna have to take a bullet for my brother?" Which is, frankly, terrifying. And far too realistic, as Joss has a standing feud with this Brian kid.
I don't like this at all. I'd love to stay home tomorrow, just to be on the safe side, but I stayed home sick yesterday, and I have to go to school tomorrow if I wanna go to It's Ac practice, edit my project, and film Grease.
Jeeeeeeezuz, can't a person just have a boring Thursday? As much as I hate being bored, I would have preferred it.