Why Daddy Drinks
How's this for a morning rush even more intense than that from a Starbucks triple espresso: the phone call from a frantic Mrs. Po at 8:30 this morning that "someone's in the (daughter #2's) high school with a gun."
That gets one's attention in a hurry. And immediately spikes the heart rate. The stories of incidents in other cities and towns flash back before you, and get you thinking - where is the gun-toting student? Is there more than one? What's the issue here? And you realize the worst thing of all - there isn't a damned thing that a parent can do, except hope for the best and fight back the emotions that pour forth when, eerily concurrent with the end of the phone call, my laptop's screensaver kicks in and flashes a photo of daughter #2, taken at the high school, last year at daughter #1's graduation.
Add to this the fact that Mrs. Po's elementary school is a stone's throw from the high school, and she not only has to deal with the fact that her child is in a locked-down school, but also with a classroom of third graders who are similarly locked-down and in the classroom.
I could go into my anti-gun rant here, or link you to Cheryl Wheeler's great song about a similar situation that ended in tragedy, but the fact of the matter is that anyone with an axe to grind about anything, who may or may not be mentally unstable enough to act on it, can act out and cause a tragedy to happen -- but it's a heck of a lot more dangerous, because virtually anyone in this country can get a handgun just as easily as they can get a pack of cigarettes or a bag of Doritos. (Oops...guess that was a mini-rant.)
Thankfully, the incident was resolved quickly and without injury - turns out that someone saw the student enter the high school with the gun, immediately reported it to staff, and all schools were locked down AFTER the student left the building, and he was apprehended (hopefully with techniques similar to those the Bush Administration endorses for dealing with "enemy combatants") in a nearby neighborhood about an hour later. I still feel like I'm running at 120 mph, though.
Daughter #2 did call on her cell phone (probably a violation of school rules, but I think the kids were deservedly cut a little slack today) an hour or so later, which was a relief. Several students had left to go home, but she figured there was enough police protection around there that she didn't want to. She assured me she was fine, but I figured I'd use the time-tested technique of prompting for dialogue from the movie "Airplane!" to check her anxiety level:
"So are you OK now? Were you nervous?"
"A little bit."
"First time?"
"No, I've been nervous before."
Yeah, she's OK, for now. But she may need to join Mrs. Po and I for a cocktail and a big hug this evening.