On the morning on Wednesday, February 14, 2018, my husband, Marc, and I headed to Columbia, SC, to the South Carolina State House because our state legislature was debating a bill that would limit teacher advancement opportunities for SC teachers seeking National Board Certification in the future. Since Marc and I are both National Board Certified Teachers, we were honored by the invitation to meet with our legislators that day to discuss the need to reward teachers who seek that prestigious certification. All went well in Columbia that morning,  yet I kept in touch with events at school through a group text I have with teachers in my department. From their conversation, I could tell that our school administration had called for another intruder drill, one of those drills that have now become almost as routine as fire drills and tornado drills. From what I could tell, despite the drill being unannounced, nearly everyone knew what to do. I worried about my substitute that day, but I thought my students had been through enough drills to help her manage the situation. I made a mental note to talk to second period class tomorrow to find out how it went. By lunch time, we were quite pleased with our progress with our state legislators, and Marc and I headed back home; he had baseball practice, and I had a faculty meeting to attend that afternoon.

Sometime after 2 pm, however, my Facebook feed and Twitter feed starting rolling with “thoughts and prayers for the students in Florida” postings.

Not again. I knew what those words meant without even knowing the details.  So, as Marc drove home, I read aloud breaking news alerts as they buzzed my phone, and just like the rest of the nation, I learned about the loss of lives from another school shooting, this time at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Just hours after my second-period students had led my substitute teacher in an intruder drill, just hours after my son and his ninth-grade English class cowered silently in a corner of the classroom, just hours after I had casually glanced at a casual text conversation about a routine intruder drill, seventeen people were slaughtered in a high school not too different from mine, not too far away from mine.

Sure, Marjory Stoneman Douglas has a few more students than Gaffney High School, and maybe it is closer to a metropolitan area, but their students are not that much different from my students, not that much different from my son. What if an intruder had chosen our school that day instead of Marjory Stoneman Douglas? A day I was out of class and a substitute teacher watched my students? A day my son would have been there without me? What would I have done? What could I have done?

I often quote Herman Hermits when I need my students to repeat a procedure: “second verse, same as the first.” Yet, here we are, stuck on a skipping record of death and terror. Worse than a skipping record – verse after verse, sad song after sad song, an entire radio station, it seems, playing the same tune: young people just like my son and just like my students never returning home from school one tragic day.

Our faculty meeting that afternoon, obviously, centered on our intruder drill – discussion of what went well, along with some details we needed to examine to make it better, safer, more secure next time. Of course, our administrators had no way of knowing that our drill day would coincide with another real shooting, so we talked about the Parkland murders, too – how sad we were once again, but how real this threat has become in all of our lives. How urgently and carefully we must continue the drills and do our best to train everyone in the building to maximize security, to do our best to keep as many as people as safe as possible in an intruder situation. I know our administration and our law enforcement teams are working tirelessly to figure out the best and most effective plans for keeping our school safe. I know that every drill informs our next one to improve our security. As a result of this effort, our administrators assured us that we needed to have another drill within a couple of months, but they also knew that the Parkland tragedy would stay with us for a while. Really, how could it leave us? Just by coincidence, the threat of gun violence became a little bit more real to us on Valentine’s Day.

We shuffled out of the lecture hall that day with a turbulent stomach rumbling that comes from feeling sympathy, fear, and frustration, coupled with a sense of helplessness, churning and mixing and spreading its toxins throughout our bodies until we just felt weak all over, a stomach ache that seems to plague us so often we might even call it a chronic illness these days.

Fast forward to the first week in March. Happier times in the English department – one of our teachers was due to have a baby boy at the end of the month, and we had planned a delicious baby shower for her. Tyson, the 5-year-old son of Heather, my long-time friend who teaches in the classroom beside me, joined us at the after-school celebration in our school’s library, along with other teachers, some family members, and even a student or two who wanted to be there. I sat at one table with Tyson and Marini, another friend and teacher in the English department. Somehow the topic of school shootings found its way into our conversation (as it seems to do regularly now), and Tyson chimed in cheerfully with this question: “Kristie, where do you hide?”

I stopped cold. Turned my head.  Stuttered  for a second.  I wasn’t even sure I had heard him correctly. “What did you say, Tyson?”

“Where do you hide when the bad guys come?” he said again. Just as if we were talking about an old western TV show.

“We go behind my desk,” I said, trying to say it as calmly and as casually as he had asked the question.

“Where do you go, ‘Rini?” He asked Marini next.

“We go behind my desk, too,” she answered, and then she asked Tyson, “Where do you hide in your classroom when the bad guys come?”

“The bathroom,” he said. Straight up. Matter-of-factly. Without blinking or seeming afraid. The little blonde kindergarten student wearing glasses, sitting with me as he ate a cake square decorated with blue booties, told me quite simply where he hides in his classroom if the bad guys come.

Tyson will never know a school where he doesn’t practice drills designed to prepare him to respond when the bad guys come. I guess, maybe my ninth grader has never known a school situation where he didn’t practice intruder drills, either. SOP – standard operating procedures now, just like duck-and-cover drills were standard for my Baby Boomer mom when she was in school.

Fast forward once more to April 10, 2018. Intruder drill again. Same class period. My students and I followed procedure and quickly retreated to our silent posts behind my desk in a corner where no one could see us if they tried to look through the small window in the locked door. Just a few days earlier, Emma Gonzalez had stood silently at the podium after she spoke at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, DC. She wanted to illustrate just how quickly 17 people had been murdered in her school on Valentine’s Day. Seven minutes to kill 17 people. I watched the clock on my phone as the minutes passed, all of us huddled together in silence, staring at the door, waiting to hear the pounding or the shaking of the door that was standard operating procedure in an intruder drill. I stopped watching when the time passed seven minutes. Our lockdown drill lasted longer than an actual shooting that left 17 innocent people dead.

Another fast forward – Friday, May 18. Prom Bash day at Gaffney High School – a day I look forward to all year long, a day of fun and celebration for juniors and seniors. 21 years ago, our principal began a tradition that has held strong and has become standard operating procedure at our school. The Friday before prom, our juniors and seniors attend an assembly in the auditorium a few minutes after they arrive at school. In that assembly, they hear a story from a survivor who has lost a loved one, often the mother of a high school student who died as a result of  someone drinking and driving or texting while driving. The stories are harrowing and sobering, which is exactly what we want them to be. Our superintendent speaks, along with some law enforcement officials and the county coroner. The point: don’t make stupid decisions on prom night; stay alive. Then, students sign their Prom Promise card which records their promise not to drink and drive / text and drive on prom night. Then, they head out to the football stadium where they spend the rest of the day eating burgers, listening to music, riding carnival rides, and winning prizes – all at no expense to any student. The entire affair is quite expensive, and we pay for Prom Bash through various fundraisers throughout the year and through donations from community members and local businesses. The money has not been spent in vain because for 21 years, we have had safe prom nights, which makes the cost of  Prom Bash seem minor. Who can put a price on the life of one of our students?

Last Friday, however, we were worried about the weather. In the previous 20 years of Prom Bash (all of which I have attended) we have had wonderful weather – sometimes unbearably hot, but never rain. The storms raged Friday morning, though, as the mother of a college student killed by a drunk driver told her story to our students who sat silent in reverence and fear, all visibly moved by her words. When the students first exited, the rain fell quite hard, but within 10 minutes, the rain stopped. We didn’t get much sun, but we also didn’t get any more rain, and our kids played freely into the cloudy afternoon.

My job was to stand post with two other teachers at the Ballistic Swings – an 8-piece affair that swung students to the side and sent them into voracious giggles. The line for riding the Ballistic Swings emerged from the first moment the kids hit the field and snaked past the goal posts throughout the afternoon. I held purses and bookbags while they rode, and occasionally, as I leaned against the temporary railing, I would take a look at my social media. I had filmed the kids riding the swings along with those riding the Whizzer beside us, and I wanted to upload it to Facebook. When I opened Facebook to post the video, I saw those same words again – this time for Texas teenagers: “Thoughts and prayers for the students at Santa Fe High School.”

Not again. Not another shooting as I stand here at Prom Bash, watching kids throwing frisbees, playing cornhole, and swallowing apple fritters. The very moment I stand in a place that looks remarkably like the carnival scene in Grease, students in Texas are weeping in fear and horror, running for their lives. My students squeal in delight while their compatriots a few states over scream in despair. We take photos of best friends in an embrace, holding up Coke cans in salute, while reporters in Texas film terrorized teens escaping from a massacre.

My immediate thoughts went again to those familiar questions. What if a shooting happened here today instead of in Texas? Today when kids are gathered on the football field to celebrate their prom, just days after they signed yearbooks wishing each other a great summer. How would I get to my son in the building reserved for freshmen that is all the way across campus? Where is the intruder drill for Prom Bash? Or for prom itself? Or Senior Awards Day on Monday? Graduation in a few weeks? Football games next fall? Must we begin to prepare for mass violence in every event? Where does it end?

How can this keep happening? How can the song keep playing, second verse, same as the first? How can we moblize nationally for Prom Promise in order to keep our children safe on prom night, but we can’t mobilize to stop gun violence on campus? I cherish our Prom Bash, and keeping our children safe from drunk driving or texting while driving is worth every penny spent and worth every minute of work put into that day. We want our children to return to school on Monday after prom; we want our children alive to walk across the stage at graduation. Yet, we allow more children to die every week in our schools as a result of gun violence. I am afraid I have no solutions; I am afraid I only sing one verse after another full of questions, tinged with despair.

All I know is that I never want violence and fear to become standard operating procedures, and I certainly don’t want to hear the next verse to this song.