It is Monday morning, don't really wanna be at school anyways, just finished Chem and now I am heading to English. I get into class, we pick partners and re-read the fourth act of Macbeth, as we are doing this, about twenty minutes into the class, an announcement comes onto the speakers.
Usually when there is an announcment it is a soft, little, cute "beep, beep" and then the secratary tells us whatever. But, this announcement made us jump, because instead of the soft, little, cute "beep, beep" it was a loud, blaring, frightening, "Braaaang!!! Raannng!" and then came the secratary's voice, which was kind of hard to understand, and she said real intensely, "We are in lockdown mode, we are in lockdown mode!" Wow, "that's freaky, but its just a drill, hmmm....they changed the little alarm bell," was what I thought, and what pretty much everyone else in class thought. So, alright, just a drill, lets all go into the corner where we cant be seen through the door's window, and lets lock the door, turn off the lights, and close the blinds.
We are sitting there, the teacher says, "Everybody try and be quiet! Last drill my class was to noisy and the RCMP officer got mad at us." The corner was pretty crammed, and I was very uncomfortable! it was about 15 minutes, and my teacher said, "The drill should be over now, they told us there was gonna be one this week, but they didn't say it'd be this long." So she grabbed her laptop to see if the teachers got an email. Then the soft, little, cute, "beep, beep" came on and a man said, "This is Constable ------- from the RCMP, this is not a drill, I repeat, this is not a drill!" wow. Everybody kind of looked at eachother. "This is kinda scary....."
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| Now that we know how this feels..... |
Well, the teacher tried to make it sound like it wasn't that big of a deal, but yet again, there was a shooting a couple years ago at a close-by school........hmmm. Scary. And she also told us this was the first legit lockdown the school had ever had. On top of all of this, I started thinking of Jurassic Park, you know, that scene where the veloci raptors are opening the door, and one has its eye pressed against the door window and you can see it breathing? Ya. My teacher said she would take a bullet for us, but not a dinosaur attack.
So we stayed cramped up in the corner, and some people had to pee- including me, we were all getting hungry, and some of the class wrote notes to their loved ones on the white boards (don't worry, it was mostly for fun) .
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| not very satisfying |
The bell rang- it was lunchtime, we were all there in the corner still, we had been there for 45 minutes. the teacher went over to her desk and got out Fibre 1 bars, some Hershey's Dark Chocolate and Werthers. We shared them all, and then she put the movie The Awakenings on on her laptop really quietly. I didn't really pay any attention to the movie, I was kind of napping.
We had been in the little corner for about 2 hours now, and let me tell ya- it was BORING, but kind of exciting! Then there was footsteps in the hallway and a knock on the door. It startled me, and I think it startled everyone else. The teacher went over to the door, and kind of peered through the window. A man said, "This is Officer------, here to let the kids have a bathroom break." She didn't open the door, and he slid his I.D. underneath the door. Then she let him in, and the RCMP told us to jog to the bathroom and back. So we did. It was kind of nerve racking. There were a couple police men in the hallway.
Even though we weren't supposed to be texting, some were, and apparently they got info that there were police all over town and that there was a bunch of unmarked cars in front of the school, and the police wouldn't let anyone go by the school. NOW that's just great!! We've been trapped in here for 2 hours and we haven't a clue what the heck is going on! It could be anything, and whatever it was it wasn't good!
We were in the classroom for a little while after the break, and then there was the soft, little, cute, "beep, beep" and a voice following, "The lockdown is now over---blah, blah, blah" We then were allowed a half- hour break.
I know how crazy this must sound, but it was kind of a neat experience. I saw a newsreporter as I left talking to some kids, (at least I assumed she was, since she had on a black coat and was holding a yellow note pad), and I also heard a police officer say to some girls that "the dogs caught them" but other then that, what really happened hasn't been confirmed, and doesn't really matter now anyways. The just of it was, we were in a lockdown for 160 minutes not knowing what the heck was going on. It was queer, and kind of exciting.
