locccckdown
My school got itself on the news
It's a
Today started out normal enough. I have English first period, and we were supposed to start watching "A Knight's Tale" with Heath Ledger. It's based (lightly like woah) on Canterbury Tales, which we just finished. Also, it works for a three-day break for those who would rather not get homework as our big Christmas Concert and Finals approach.
So we turned on the movie and it was just a few minutes until we got an announcement from a very frantic, very frightened-sounding Principle, alerting teachers that we were "in a hard lock-down" and this was "not a drill". Trulife, friends!
So for those first few minutes of being cramped and sqeezed against the wall with lights off in silence, we were all terrified. At our wits ends. After a few minutes, we started to make jokes and lighten up a bit...but the majority of us were still just trying to ignore our fear. Our teacher assured us that she's never had a real lockdown in her career, and they're very frightening things...especially when we realized it was a gun threat that put us in our spots. We could hear cop cars (and see them out the window) and all knew it was very possible there was an armed threat walking around.
Just a bit longer and we had loosened up a bit (physically) to the place where no one was any longer sitting on top of people. We turned the TV on mute to see if we were on the news. We got to CNN and the screen showed cop cars, fires, and explosions. The room went silent as we were all wondering; is that US? But it only took a few seconds for us to read the caption.
"Anarchy in Athens".
No one could do anything but laugh.
By this time we had already decided that someone should write a book about this, if not a movie.
We kept flipping channels and the kid who is sort of our designated class techie settled on a commercial of a fairly heavy-set african american woman advertising Tylenol. My teacher asked what he was doing on that channel and he answered, "it's the closest I could find to our school!" It's not hard to say that, again, we were laughing. (It's a joke a lot of you probably wouldn't get...but to simplify it, our school is known as being a majority of minorities. :D)
Easily, the most amusing part of that first hour or so was with one chick's lunch. She was one of the very few in our class blessed enough to have packed her lunch that day, and first she shared her pretzels. We warned her against wasting her rations, but she always assured us "don't worry, I have a banana and a sandwich!". At this time, as it was still that half hour or so of laughing to mask our fear, we had planned millions of ways to protect ourselves should Gunman walk in. Our Teacher had already volunteered her ice tea, we had plenty of kids ready to chuck books, chairs, and printers if needs be. Eventually, when that girl with the food pulled out her banana, we found our best protectator yet. You know those lovely "Chiquita" stickers on the bananas? Well, our class's patron hero had one of its own, reading "The Food that Fights for You". The banana was passed around the class, perhaps sharing our first true laugh. Our teacher promptly tied it to the overhead pully-string, drawing chalk arrows on the board to remind us of its constant protection.
Eventually, the teacher decided it was a good idea to put on A Knight's Tale on mute, as we were all cramped under the TV anyway. So, for the next two hours or so, we watched it. Very funny movie, but I've been assured the best part is the music/voices, so we missed out. Plus, only about four people paid attention to the TV. Most were chattering, laughing, or playing games in our tiny uncomfortable corner.
Hours went by. The movie finished, and the teacher decided to teach. NOT COOL, BTW. IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING. In case you forgot, Knight's Tale is supposed to last us three days...Today, Tomorrow, and Friday. Then, Monday we have for Finals review and Tuesday is our Multiple Choice final. Real finals go from Wednesday-Friday. The lesson she taught us is supposed to be for after break. We got that homework she promised to never give us for the Christmas Concert.
During the lesson, the police finally came in. A few hours before (it was quarter after eleven by this time; hour four of lockdown) we had recieved information (through secretive texts, as our classroom was one of the few not allowed to text or use our phones openly) that the police were "searching" from the third story down. Our classroom was on the bottom floor, so it was a good sign we were close to being done.
They had us line up and searched all our bags and frisked every student. Our officers were pretty nice and teacher even chatted with them a bit. She was thrilled to introduce them to the banana that had protected us that whole time.
The officers told us we could leave our lights on and sit down as the threat had passed, but that we were to remain quiet. They also assured us that bathroom escorts were just behind them. Hours in one class is NOT fun...we were all missing passing periods where we drink and use the bathrooms, not to mention our lunch periods. Those pretzels were long gone.
Teacher had us do homework and seemed to be even stricter about quiet than she had when the threat was still intact. That threat, by the way? It was revealed to be a bebe gun. Yup. And that movie I said would be written about the incident? I decided right then...it had better be a comedy.
After five hours in first period, our principle released us. Everyone was hoping and hoping and hoping we would be sent home, but instead we were told that the four lunch periods (3, 4, 5, and 6) would be for thirty minutes. Also, NOT COOL.
The remainder of the day wasn't bad, except for the fact that I was still at school. Genetics was pretty much spent looking up online articles about the lockdown. AP Art History we actually had class, but lunch and gym were really just complaining with friends.
Every class had a different experiance...some were awesome (the teachers that let them play games or text all they want), some were horrible (the kids who peed in bottles and trashcans, or the teachers that made them sit against the wall in total silence all five hours), some were funny (The tiny asian orchestra teacher getting a gun pointed at his face when he entered the classroom during their frisking from their 'pee room'), and some were sad (the girl who fainted).
Every individual had a different experiance, too. One girl trapped in the locker-room played hide-and-seek and made tons of new friends while my friend, in that same locker-room, was without any friends and without her phone, homework, or our journal to write in and bored out of her mind. Another friend, who unfortunately can't seem to survive without laughing, realized how dangerous that can be. A girl in her class was flipping out whilst being frisked down, and Jenny laughed. The cop immediately pointed a gun at her vand yelled, "IT'S NOT FUNNY."
I know people were scared...both in and out of the school. But the longer we were trapped, the safer we knew we were. We had the Aurora PD with us as well as the Dupage County PD. Heck, we even had US Marshalls! There were dogs barking in the hallway, but really...that's just drug busts going down. Besides...we had that banana with us!
I love my school. :)
(and yay. I get to use that tag again!)