Growing Up With Mass Shootings and Lockdown Drills

Image courtesy of Chloe Torgesen.

I was 15 months old when the Columbine shooting happened, too young to know a time when school shootings didn’t always hover at the edge of our collective consciousness. Every year we would go through the drills as if such practice would protect us.  We got good at the hiding part, even making a competition of it: who could fit in the most hidden, cramped area of our classroom. I’ve seen classmates squeeze themselves under racks of chairs and into the crannies of bookcases. I don’t remember how young I was when I decided my best plan was to act like I was already dead. I don’t remember how young I was when I felt the need to expand that plan, deciding I would hide under dead bodies and paint myself with my classmates’ blood to survive. 

In high school, my friends would darkly joke that we would rather take our chances running to the woods that bordered campus than trying to lock down inside—better to be game hunted in the woods than fish in a barrel, we decided. In hindsight, nothing would have actually been an effective plan against an AR-15, as military grade weapons aren’t meant to be outrun by anyone, much less by children. Maybe my original plan of pretending to be dead would have worked better. Maybe neither would have saved me if I had been unlucky enough to be present during a mass shooting. 

While I was still in high school, I decided that I wanted to work with children someday. I wrote affirmations in my notes app encouraging myself to be brave enough to give up my life to protect other kids. You can’t just run for the woods or hide under bodies if there are people relying on you.

Should I tell you how it felt the first time I was in charge of a group of students during a code red drill? Should I tell you about the time I held a 6-year old as she had a panic attack, because she had heard a little too much about what a code red meant and was afraid she was going to die? Should I tell you that I promised her and the group of children surrounding us that Ms. Chloe would never let anything bad happen to them? Should I tell you that they believed me, because they are still too young to know that a trusted adult won’t always win against the monsters?

In spite of these experiences, I know I am one of the lucky ones. I’ve had a few close brushes with active shootings, but my timing has kept me out of danger so far. I’ve experienced one false alarm, but everyone walked away unharmed that day, at least physically. Mentally, the incident left a mark, and demonstrates the emotional burden of living in a time when mass shootings happen so often.

I was working at the local mall: We found out later that a fight had broken out in the food court and that a chair smacking the floor had caused the panic. People ran screaming through the halls and mothers were panicking because their kids were in different stores and weren’t picking up their phones. I remember leading everyone in our store to the back and barricading the storage room. I called my dad, who stayed on the line with me while I cried on the phone thinking my nightmares had come true.

The police eventually escorted everyone out, and we found out it had been a false alarm. We were obviously relieved, though the terror we endured was very real. Despite the relief, no one publicly acknowledged the scars from this experience: a false alarm means no trauma, right? We were all expected to come back to work the next day with smiles on our faces: “Customers, pay no attention if our associates seem jumpier than usual; thank you for shopping with us!”

Still, I am fortunate. I have not lost a loved one to gun violence the way so many others have. I will keep fighting in the hope that I never lose a loved one or a child in my care to gun violence. I will keep fighting so that someday, American lives won’t be the price we pay for our gun culture. I will keep fighting so that my future students will only know the fear of math tests, and not of bloody classrooms. Whoever you are, reading this now, I will keep fighting for your safety too.