A Lockdown Drill, Seven Years After Sandy Hook
“Lockdown. Lockdown. Lockdown.”
Fifty of us piled up against the wall, concealing ourselves from the door. At first, there were a few giggles and exasperated sighs.
But there was no follow-up announcement. No indication that there was a drill. Murmurs started dissipating through the crowd. “This isn’t real, right?” “It’s just a drill, right?”
Then, the door rattled, the metal bar ringing as the locks restrained the door from flying open. In that moment, my heart jumped. I was sitting on the outer ring of the group, close to the door. A rolly chair was in front of me. “Should I grab this and charge, or should I turn and run?” I thought to myself in that instant.
During lockdown drills, it is standard procedure for school officials to ensure that all doors are locked. In those few seconds where the rattling lingered ominously and ambiguously in the air, I was literally experiencing a fight-or-flight. I thought about the end. About the fifty innocent, hopeless sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds sitting next to me. About the subsequent slaughter. About another news headline.
When the door didn’t budge, and when the ringing subsided, a number of heads around me fell into sweaty palms. Barely-audible gasps of relief interrupted the eerie silence.
My relief was quickly disrupted as I remembered my twelve-year-old sister. In a classroom on the floor below. “Do I run out and try to find her?”
In a few minutes, an assistant principal called an end to the drill. Reassurance once more swept through the room. However, students were expected to return to their seats and simply resume the school day.
It’s hard to find normalcy amidst this type of hysteria. It’s hard to treat things the same when they simply aren’t.
Seven years to the date after Sandy Hook, the hysteria is still alive, and it’s still crippling. We still don’t know how to respond to it, though. Lockdown drills like the one my peers and I endured yesterday fuel the fire, and they amplify the psychological trauma created by school shootings. Under New York law, schools are not allowed to notify students or parents if a lockdown is drill of if is real; why are us youth being conditioned to live in fear?
As students, we go about our school days, diligently taking our notes, aimlessly watching the clock, joyously socializing with our friends, but in the back of everyone’s mind, the same what-if hovers. It’s portended by the police car parked in front of the main entrance, the security guards sitting by the entrance, the ID requirements to enter campus. Normalcy — being a kid, as our parents like to say — is no longer possible in today’s world, especially when the idea of not being a kid surrounds us and is spoonfed to us.
