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Dear America: Kids doing active-shooter drills is not normal.

As thousands across the nation prepare to take to the streets on March 24, 2018, for The March for Our Lives, we're taking a look at some of the root causes, long-lasting effects, and approaches to solving the gun violence epidemic in America. We'll have a new installment every day this week.

I was teaching in a high school classroom when the Columbine shooting happened.

In between periods, a student rushed into my room and turned on the television. As other students shuffled in, they caught the scene on TV and stopped in their tracks.


Together we gaped silently at aerial footage of teens pouring out of their school, covered in their classmates' blood. News reporters struggled to offer details about the shooter or shooters, still unclear if the carnage had ended. Still unsure of the body count.

I looked around at my 15- and 16-year-old students, their eyes wide with a mix of shock and fear. Even the goofy class clown stared somberly at the screen. I considered whether it was prudent to let them see all of this, but the only difference between that high school and ours was geography. Those bloodied students could have been my students. They knew it, and I knew it.

It seems commonplace now, but that was a feeling I'd never felt as a teacher before. And I'd only felt something similar once as a kid.

Tom Mauser walks along a wall at the Columbine High School Memorial; his son Daniel was one of students killed in the Columbine shooting. Photo by Don Emmert/Getty Images.

I remember when I was little, sitting huddled in a ball under my desk, imagining the classroom around me exploding.

It was the early 1980s. I must have been 6 or 7. My class was doing a nuclear-blast preparation drill, a hallmark of the Cold War era in which I was born. I remember staring at the thin metal legs of my desk, wondering how they were supposed to protect me from a bomb going off.

Nuclear annihilation — not being gunned down in school — was the big concern of my childhood. Such duck-and-cover drills disappeared by my middle elementary years, so the threat felt short-lived. Of course, a nuclear blast is always a terrifying thought, but somehow, I just knew it wasn't likely to happen.

I imagined it, though. And the imagining alone shook me as a young child. Sometimes I look back and wonder how Americans lived like that for so long.

A kindergartener in Hawaii hides under a desk during a lockdown drill. Photo via Phil Mislinski/Getty Images.

Kids in high school now have been doing active-shooter lockdown drills their entire childhoods.

The year after Columbine, my husband and I started our family, and I left teaching. I chose to homeschool my kids, and though lockdowns weren't part of that decision, the lack of active-shooter drills has been a significant perk of homeschooling.

Unlike nuclear preparation drills, active-shooter drills are meant to prepare kids for something they know has happened multiple times. They've heard the news stories. Some kids have been through the real thing themselves.

I try to imagine it — my sweet 9-year-old boy huddled in a closet with 20 of his classmates, forced into unnatural silence as they wait for the sound of a would-be shooter trying to enter their locked classroom. I can see his face, the very real fear in his eyes. I can honestly feel his racing heartbeat.

It guts me just to think about it.

An elementary school teacher (who requested anonymity because the internet is ridiculous and she's received death threats) posted a description of a recent active-shooter drill in her classroom. The post has been shared close to 200,000 times and for good reason. It's a simple description of an unfathomable reality.

"Today in school we practiced our active shooter lockdown. One of my first graders was scared and I had to hold him. Today is his birthday. He kept whispering 'When will it be over?' into my ear. I kept responding 'Soon' as I rocked him and tried to keep his birthday crown from stabbing me.

I had a mix of 1-5 graders in my classroom because we have a million tests that need to be taken. My fifth grader patted the back of the 2nd grader huddled next to him under a table. A 3rd grade girl cried silently and clutched the hand of her friend. The rest of the kids sat quietly (casket quiet) and stared aimlessly in the dark.

As the 'intruder' tried to break into our room twice, several of them jumped, but remained silently. The 1st grader in my lap began to pant and his heart was beating out of his chest, but he didn't make a peep."



Image via Facebook, used with permission.

Seriously. These are babies we are putting through this. (Well, not literal babies, but still.)

And these drills can be even more terrifying than you might imagine.

At a high school in Anchorage, Alaska, an officer used the sound of real gunfire — blanks shot from a real gun — during active-shooter drills. The idea was that kids would learn what actual gunfire sounds like so they can act quickly when they hear it.

"We don't want to scare them," the principal, Sam Spinella, told CNN affiliate KTVA. "We want this to become as close to reality as possible."

I am dumbfounded. Those two sentences make zero sense together. We're not talking about a police training academy here — we're talking about an average day in high school. The reality they are trying to prepare them for is scary — how could a preparation "as close to reality as possible" not be?

A recent article in The Atlantic examined the psychological effects of active-shooter drills on kids. Surprisingly, not a lot of research has been done on the subject. All we really have are reports of young adults who grew up with them.

One interviewee described a memory of his classmate coughing during a lockdown drill when he was 12. Their teacher reacted by telling the class that in a real shooter situation, they'd all be dead now.

Yeah, probably not the best way to handle that.

But what is the best way to prepare children for the possibility of a gunman trying to kill their classmates, their favorite teacher, their best friend?

We want kids to feel safe and secure. We don't want to scare kids as we prepare them for something that is undeniably scary. But is it smart to scare them a little bit in order for them to understand the seriousness of the drill? And if kids aren't scared at all — if they are totally unfazed by active-shooter drills — how can we justify them being so desensitized?

Ugh. This is not normal. This should never feel normal.

And yet, this is normal. In fact, some people tell me they feel comforted by the preparation.

I talked to a handful of teens and young adults who grew up with lockdown drills. One described a series of bomb threats at her high school, which she said were scary at first, but eventually became a "boy who cried wolf" situation. Another described intruder drills as simply preparing for the unexpected, not much different than an earthquake or tornado drill.

One high schooler, Joe Burke of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, told me about the first lockdown drill he remembers in the fifth grade. He and his classmates huddled under computer desks along the wall, knees hugged to their chests, with the lights off and door locked:

"When we were sitting under the desks, I had a slight bit of doubt in the idea. To my fifth-grade self, it didn't seem like the best idea to just be hiding if someone were to come in and try and hurt us. It would only take a few seconds of searching to find 25-plus kids and a teacher all cramped under those tables. ... At the time, I automatically assumed that the adults knew more than we did. I figured that we were much safer than I realize we actually were, in retrospect."

Burke said the new ALICE training his high school has implemented has made him feel better prepared and is "a massive step in the right direction." (ALICE is a for-profit training program that has been implemented in schools across the country. Here's an interesting analysis of the praise and criticism of it.)

Joe Burke spoke at his high school's walkout on March 14, 2018. Photo via Christine Burke, used with permission.

Joe's mother, Christine Burke, said that she has made it a point to talk to her kids about active shooter situations in detail:

"After Parkland, I sat with my 15-year-old son and showed him the footage of the shooting inside the building. We talked about how the smoke from an AR-15 would disorient his way out, that the gun would be loud, that screaming classmates would make it hard to hear instructions. We talked about how his phone need not be a priority (no filming the scene, no taking pictures) but that he should use it as a means of communication only if he could. And we talked about how the ALICE training would feel in a real situation. That conversation with my son chilled me to my bones because I realized that this is the world we live in now. I have to talk to my son about his algebra grade and about how loud an AR-15 sounds when fired in a classroom."

Christine, like many parents, finds herself navigating surreal waters. We have accepted the inevitability of school shootings to the point where we actively prepare our kids for them.

Generally speaking, preparedness is good. Preparedness is smart.

And yet, how can we accept that this is the reality for children in America? Parents across the country constantly say to themselves, "We shouldn't have to do this. Our kids shouldn't have to do this." And yet, they do.

Christine Burke (left) and her friend Jen were the only two parents who joined her son's school walkout for National School Walkout on March 14, 2018. Photo via Christine Burke, used with permission.

Is this really the price we have to pay for freedom?

We're supposed to be a fantastic, developed country, aren't we? We pride ourselves on being a "shining city on a hill" a leader among nations, a beacon of freedom to all people.

There is no official war happening on American soil. We are not a country experiencing armed conflict or revolution or insurrection. And yet we live as if we are.

People in other countries look at our mass shootings and what we've attempted to do about them and think we are out of our ever-loving minds. I'm right there with them. As a former teacher and current homeschool parent, I feel like I'm peering in from the outside with my jaw to the floor at what we've accepted as normal for our children.

I'm a fan of the U.S. Constitution and don't take changes to it lightly, but maybe it's time to accept that the Second Amendment has not actually protected our freedoms the way it was designed to. We are not a free people when our children have to hide in closets and listen for gunfire as they imagine themselves the next victims of a mass-murdering gunman during math class.

This is not normal. This should never feel normal.

Kids who have repeatedly and systematically prepared for carnage in their classrooms are taking to the streets, to the podium, to the media — and soon to the polls — in a way we haven't seen in decades.

It's easy to see why. These teens have spent their childhoods watching the adults in charge respond to the mass murder of children by simply preparing for more of it. And they're done.

I'm unbelievably proud of the way these young people are organizing, saying #NeverAgain and pushing for effective gun legislation. Their efforts have convinced the governor of Florida to break with the National Rifle Association and sign a sweeping gun control bill. (Though not perfect, it's a big step for the "Gunshine State.") Companies feeling the pressure and momentum have broken ties with the NRA as well.

I can't help but note how these kids' successes highlight previous generations' failure on this issue. The time for taking real action was long before Parkland, Sandy Hook, or even Columbine. But I feel the sea change coming.

These young activists give me hope that maybe future generations will look back in wonder at how we lived like this for so long.

For more of our look at America's gun violence epidemic, check out other stories in this series:

And see our coverage of to-the-heart speeches and outstanding protest signs from the March for Our Lives on March 24, 2018.

Pop Culture

'Wicked' author says one line in 'The Wizard of Oz' inspired Elphaba and Glinda's backstory

Gregory Maguire says he "fell down to the ground" laughing when the idea hit him.

Public domain

The two witches in "The Wizard of Oz" clearly had a history together.

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or listened to a piece of music and wondered, "How did they come up with that idea?" The creative process is so enigmatic even artists themselves don't always know where their ideas come from, so It's a treat when we get to hear the genesis of a brilliant idea straight from the horse's mouth. If you've watched "Wicked" and wondered where the idea for the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Glinda (the Good Witch) came from, the author of the book has shared the precise moment it came to him.

The hit movie "Wicked" is based on the 20-year-old hit stage musical, which is based on the novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" written by Gregory Maguire. While the musical is a simplified version of the 1995 book, the basic storyline—the origin story of the two witches from "The Wizard of Oz"—lies at the heart of both. In an interview with BBC, Maguire explained how Elphaba and Glinda's friendship popped into his head.

 

Maguire was visiting Beatrix Potter's farm in Cumbria, England, and thinking about "The Wizard of Oz," which he had loved as a child and thought could be an interesting basis for a story about evil.

"I thought 'alright, what do we know about 'The Wizard of Oz' from our memories,'" he said. "We have the house falling on the witch. What do we know about that witch? All we know about that witch is that she has feet. So I began to think about Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West…

 glinda, elphaba, wicked,  In "Wicked," the two Oz witches met as students at Shiz University.  Giphy GIF by Wicked 

"There is one scene in the 1939 film where Billie Burke [Glinda the Good Witch] comes down looking all pink and fluffy, and Margaret Hamilton [the Wicked Witch of the West] is all crawed and crabbed and she says something like, 'I might have known you'd be behind this, Glinda!' This was my memory, and I thought, now why is she using Glinda's first name? They have known each other. Maybe they've known each other for a long time. Maybe they went to college together. And I fell down onto the ground in the Lake District laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together."

In "Wicked," Glinda and the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, meet as students at Shiz University, a school of wizardry. They get placed as roommates, loathe each other at first, but eventually become best friends. The story grows a lot more complicated from there (and the novel goes darker than the stage play), but it's the character development of the two witches and their relationship with one another that force us to examine our ideas about good and evil.

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

 

Maguire also shared with the Denver Center for Performing Arts what had inspired him to use the "Wizard of Oz" characters in the first place.

"I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: 'Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?' I caught myself ready to have a fully formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler – what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime. I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad. I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times. But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. Everybody in America knows who the Wicked Witch of the West is, but nobody really knows anything about her. There is more to her than meets the eye."

 wizard of oz, wicked witch of the west The Wicked Witch of the West has a story of her own.  Giphy  

Authors and artists—and their ideas—help hold a mirror up to humanity for us to see and reflect on who we are, and "Wicked" is one of those stories that makes us take a hard look at what we're seeing in that mirror. Thanks, Gregory Maguire, for launching us on a collective journey that not only entertains but has the potential to change how we see one another.

This story originally appeared last year.

via Josie Bowers / TikTok

Josie Bowers, a 19-year-old woman from Canada, shared the story of how she thwarted an intruder when she was 15. The viral TikTok video is a harrowing tale and a valuable lesson for everyone to learn. Josie was staying with her family at the Ocean City Hilton in Ocean City, Maryland, when the incident occurred.

She went to her hotel room alone to take a shower while her family was on the beach. After getting out of the shower, she was alarmed when she noticed a long wire with a hook at the end wiggling its way out of the crack at the bottom of the front door. The hook was waving around, trying to catch the handle to open the door. It's amazing that no one in the hallway noticed the incredibly suspicious activity.

The intruders eventually caught the handle with the wire and pulled it down to enter the room. Without hesitation, Josie slammed the door shut and put on the deadbolt. "My main thought was holy sh*t, I'm in a towel right now and someone is about to break in and get me," she said on TikTok. "So the door opens a crack, and I just slammed it back shut and put the deadbolt on."

After the door was shut on the intruders, they pretended to work for the hotel. "So they tell me your keycard is broken and we need to get into the room and fix your keypad for you," she continued. "And so I open the door a tad bit, to see if it was a worker. It clearly wasn't, they were in jeans and a T-shirt. Hilton keeps it pretty classy, not the attire."

@josiebowers10

Reply to @emmade1rey #part2

Josie then remembered a trick that her stepfather, who's a police officer, once told her: Never let people know you're alone.

"I yelled 'Hey dad, there's someone here to fix the door.' As soon as they thought that I wasn't alone – and potentially my dad was there – they ran, they were gone," she said. A lot of people freeze in such a stressful situation but Josie was able to remember her stepfather's advice and it made all the difference.

Given their reaction, it's pretty clear that the intruders must have followed her up from the beach or had some inside information to know that she was alone. They didn't want anything to do with her father. "So I think I'm very smart for this one, my stepdad is a police officer, he taught me never to let people know you're alone. I yelled 'Hey dad, there's someone here to fix the door.' As soon as they thought that I wasn't alone, and potentially my dad was there. They ran, they were gone," she said.

@josiebowers10

Reply to @lionacreates #part3 #oceancity

The TikTokker shared the video to show others what they should do in a similar situation and to remind them to never let anyone know they are alone.

"I'm glad I had this experience so I can teach people about it. Obviously, I'm safe but it could have ended up a lot worse," she said. "Be safe, you can get door stoppers, always put on the deadbolt."


This article originally appeared four years ago.

via James Breakwell/X

All parents have had similar convos with thier kiddos.

Raising kids is tough, but there's a lot of laughs along the way. Especially when actual conversations start, as kids begin trying to make sense out of the world around them, ask questions, and test mommy and daddy's resolve.

Back in 2018, comedy writer and children's book author James Breakwell, with four daughters who were all under the age of eight at the time, shared their hilarious conversations on X. From these tweets, it looks like comedy runs in the family. Here's a sampling of some Breakwell's funniest kid-inspired tweets.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

While Breakwell's 7-year-old wasn't as heavily featured, when she was quoted, the sarcasm was palpable. Which makes sense, considering that kiddos begin understanding this mechanism around that age.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Kids really do say the darnedest things, and we love them for it. It one of the many, many ways then bring so much joy to the world. It almost makes up for the headaches and sleepless nights, doesn't it.

This article originally appeared seven years ago.

Remember things being built to last?

Americans are well aware of shrinkflation, where food companies reduce the sizes of their products while the price remains the same at the grocery store. You see this in fast food restaurants when you pick up a burger and feel like your hand has grown a few inches, and at the supermarket when you buy a box of cookies, it weighs less than it did a few weeks ago. Companies use this strategy when they think you’ll be less likely to notice a dip in quantity than a hike in the price.

We see something similar in the world of retail, particularly fast fashion. Fast fashion offers cheaper garments made from low-quality materials that last about as long as the trend does, so people can throw them away and buy the next hot thing. This can be a real problem because fast fashion harms the environment and leads to exploitative labor practices. And the tough part is—even for the most conscious of consumer, it's hard to escape from.

Here's a prime example of what this looks like in the real world. A few months ago, a TikTokker named Tom (@SideMoneyTom), popular for making videos about consumer products, went viral for a video where he called out shoe manufacturers for dropping their quality while keeping prices high. “So many of you guys want to shoot the messenger, but look, it's not my fault shoes are made out of Styrofoam and oil now,” Tom says in a TikTok with over 528,000 views. “It's literally every shoe you look at now. It's not even just the cheap ones. I can find hundred dollar plus pairs of shoes all day long with glue squeezing out of their Styrofoam cracks.”

 
 @sidemoneytom Replying to @Oscar Magaña shoes are done #fyp #shoes #foryou ♬ original sound - SideMoneyTom 
 
 

Tom notes that recently, shoes have been made with foam soles instead of rubber. Both have pros and cons. Foam is a little more comfortable, but rubber lasts a lot longer. Rubber shoes keep shape and support over time and are much more durable. Conversely, foam shoes compress over time, losing their support and comfort. When companies sell cheaper shoes that wear out more quickly, they make much more money because you must keep replacing them.

In the video, Tom adds that many companies that used to have shoes made with rubber heels, such as Carhartt and Timberland, have switched to foam. This is an interesting choice for brands that pride themselves on selling durable products.

Cora Harrington, a writer and lingerie expert, says that companies aren't entirely to blame. Americans don’t want to pay higher prices. “People don’t exactly want to pay more for all that stuff,” Harrington told Vox. "So what has to happen if everything is more expensive and the customers still want to pay the same price, something has to be cut and that’s often going to be the quality of the garment.”

“There is an entire generation of consumers at this point that doesn’t actually know what high-quality clothing feels like and looks like,” Harrington continues. “It gets easier, I think, for consumers to just not know any better.”

Many commenters have noticed the decline in shoe quality and praised Tom for pointing it out. "I am so happy I’m not the only one who is baffled by shoes being made of styrofoam and then being upcharged for them," one commenter wrote. "When shoes started being named some version of 'Air Light Cloud float,' my thought was it was because they went from quality rubber to cheap foam and less materials,” another commenter added.

Tom believes the decline in shoe quality is an example of a more significant trend affecting American consumers' products: quality is decreasing while prices remain the same. “The quality of everything is going to hell, and the prices are going up," Tom concludes his video. "The problem is, so many of us have just become used to it that we keep buying it, and we basically allow them to dumb down the quality of everything. Everything in our lives. These shoes are just the tip of the iceberg. Start thinking about it in your life. What are you gonna allow to be garbage quality?"

This article originally appeared in March.

Boomer panic is real.

In a video posted in September 2023, TikToker @myexistentialdread used the phrase “boomer panic” to explain how baby boomers (1946 to 1964) can quickly become unhinged when faced with the most minor problems. It all started when she visited a Lowe’s hardware store and encountered a boomer-aged woman working at the check-out stand.

“I had a dowel that didn’t have a price tag on it, whatever, so I ran back and took a photo of the price tag. And as I was walking back towards her, I was holding up my phone… because I had multiple dowels and that was the one that didn’t have the price tag on it,” she said in the video. “And she looks at me and she goes, ‘I don’t know which one that is,’ and she starts like, panicking.” The TikToker said that the woman was “screechy, panicking for no reason.”

 older woman upset, boomer reactions, boomer panic Older people can become frustrated over seemingly small things.Photo credit: Canva

Many people raised by boomers understood what she meant by "boomer panic." "Boomer panic is such a good phrase for this! Minor inconvenience straight to panic," the most popular commenter wrote. And while there was some unfortunate boomer-bashing in the comments, some younger people tried to explain why the older folks have such a hard time regulating their emotions: “From conversations with my mother, they weren’t allowed to make mistakes and were harshly punished if they did.” The TikToker responded, “A lot of people mentioned this, and it breaks my heart. I think you’re right,” Myexistentialdread responded.

A follow-up video by YourTango Editor Brian Sundholm tried to explain boomer panic in an empathetic way.

 

“Well, it's likely that there actually was a reason the woman started panicking about a seemingly meaningless problem,” Sundholm said. “Most of us nowadays know the importance of recognizing and feeling our emotions.” Sundholm then quoted therapist Mitzi Bachman, who says that when people bottle up their emotions and refuse to express them, it can result in an "unhinged" reaction.

TikToker Gabi Day shared a similar phenomenon she noticed with her boomer mom; she called the behavior “anxiety-at-you.”

Day’s boomer mother was “reactive,” “nervous,” and “anxious” throughout her childhood. Now, she is still on edge with Day’s children. “She's immediately like gasping and just really like exaggerated physical reactions, and then, of course, that kind of startles my kid,” Day said. “Again, I know that this comes from a place of care. It's just a lot,” she continued.

@itsgabiday

It comes from a place of love but it is exhausting 🫠😬 #millennialmomsoftiktok #boomergrandma #reparenting #gentleparenting

 

There is a significant difference in emotional intelligence and regulation between how boomers were raised and how younger generations, such as Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z, were brought up. Boomers grew up when they had to bottle up their feelings to show their resilience. This can lead to growing anger, frustration with situations and people, chronic stress, and anxiety—all conditions that can lead to panicky, unhinged behavior.

Ultimately, Sundholm says that we should sympathize with boomers who have difficulty regulating their emotions and see it as an example of the great strides subsequent generations have made in managing their mental health. “It may seem a little harsh to call something 'boomer panic,' but in the context of how many of them were raised, it makes a lot of sense,” Sundholm says. “It also underlines the importance of emotional regulation skills and teaching them to future generations. And maybe most important, having compassion for those who never had a chance to learn them.”

 older person's hands holding a younger person's hands, compassion for elderly Having compassion for older generations can go a long way.Photo credit: Canva

This article originally appeared in March.