Monday, October 25, 2004

Innocence lost

While driving Calista to school, our morning conversation somehow came to the subject of fire drills. Last week they'd gone through the whole fire drill routine, she informed me. And also a poison drill.

Poison drill?

A railroad track runs right near the school--a hundred yards away, give or take. Union Pacific has had an inordinate number of derailments in and around San Antonio lately, and this summer a toxic cloud of chlorine gas killed a number of people after one pileup. So if there's a train derailment that releases toxic chemicals, all the students go to one particular room, which the teachers then seal up with duct tape around the door so they don't all die. Bear in mind she's telling me this with a combination of matter-of-fact and breathless enthusiasm that only a five-year-old can muster. Naturally, the spectre of a clorine cloud rolling over the school wasn't an image I was particularly taken with.

Then she told me about the "bad guy" drill. Explaining the step-by-step process the kids and teachers are supposed to go through was chilling for me to hear. Obviously, the lessons of Columbine have been taken to heart by the school district. And the counter-terrorism actions they have in place are good ones. But that doesn't make it any less troubling.

My generation grew up in a different time. Kids in the 70s and 80s didn't have to face a major war that killed or scarred ourselves or classmates. The Cold War was too abstract a concept to grasp. Terrorism only happened in other countries, and school shootings weren't an issue. We practiced fire drills every year, and very occasionally tornado drills. That was it for excitement. We had it good, relatively speaking, and had hoped the same for our children. But now they're facing the 21st Century equivalent of "Duck and cover." I'm not happy about that, but such is the world we live in.

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