I kept Isa home from school today.
At 6:00am just after my alarm went off I got a txt from her school telling me that threats had been made against students at the school but "not to worry. Yeah, no. At first I was worried that I was just freaking out for no reason. That I was being "that" parent. But you know what? I didn't care.
I remember so vividly, being in high school, attending my classes like normal, and finding out that across the country a massacre was taking place at a high school just like mine. Columbine High School. For hours we learned of the terrors that were/had happened. It seemed to take forever. There was no social media, kids didn't have cell phones, there were no school procedures for this. For hours we didn't know what was going on. Just that people were dead and dying. Kids my age. Just like me. We could see bodies, blood, people crying and running literally for their lives. I'm sure everyone my age remembers that day. It hits hard.
It changed everything. We all saw the world differently. With a layer of suspicion and fear. I remember there were a couple boys in my grade. Boys who wore trench coats. People started whispering about them. Were they going to come to school and shoot us? They were excluded and treated like freaks. Ironically, that treatment is the excuse those other boys used for their massacre. We were all afraid. Grasping for some kind of logic and Some way that it could be prevented.
As the years go on, violence at school becomes more and more common. Several of Isa's friends played it off like it was no big deal. Like that could never happen here. They joked, teased and dismissed. Well, I've got news for you. NO ONE thinks it will actually happen to them or someone they know. But it does. So many families have lost children, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles... people. People were lost. Lives changed forever. IT DOES HAPPEN.
Regardless of the fact that no violence took place at her school today, I'm grateful that Isa's school takes any threat against a student or the school as a whole seriously. I'm even more grateful that they opted to send out that txt and email. I'm sure there are many families who would have loved the chance to get a warning. To have the chance to keep their loved ones home and away from danger. I'm so so grateful I had a choice, and I'd make the same one every time.