Sunday, September 14, 2008
Hell.
So yesterday was probably one of the worst days of my adult life.
You're probably going to snort and roll your eyes and scroll past this, like most of us tend to with all "worst day" posts, but...yeah. I'm still pretty sure it was one of the worst days I can recall.

I thought, for a few hours, that I might potentially lose my little sister to some school-shooting, child-raping, horrible horrible person.

We got a call at about 9:00am. It was a recorded message - I didn't get to hear it, but Dad did.
Emily's (my sister) school was under lockdown. There was a suspect at large, armed and dangerous. parents weren't allowed to pick up their kids, and no one could enter or exit the buildings.

I was a bit rattled, naturally.

And.
I'm not a violent person, but some little part of me wanted to find that man and hurt him. Very badly.

At about 10:00 we got another call from the school. It was still under lockdown, the suspect still armed, dangerous and wandering about.

I turned on the news - CNN, Fox, anything. There's no "local" news station here, so we kind of have to make due.
All the major news stations were covering the hurricane- nothing on Colorado Springs or the fuck with a gun.

I went ahead and texted my sister. "You okay?"
No reply.
I wasn't sure if I should call her or not - the calls from the school were vague, and I had no idea if the gunman was inside the school, slightly to the left of it, or right there, doing horrible, unspeakable things to my little sister.

Around four in the afternoon, my sister finally answered my text. "I'm fine, y?"
So I called her.
Turned out she had been at home all along. Her phone doesn't get reception in her house, though, unless she's in the north corner of the kitchen or something.
She wasn't even at school. Hadn't heard what was going on until I explained about the calls we got from the school.

The six o'clock news mentioned something about it.
Just in passing.
Some guy had hopped in a car in New Mexico and forced the lady to drive to Colorado.
her car broke down outside C. Springs and she ran for it. Got help.
The dude high-tailed it toward the north end of town. Broke in to a couple houses, fucked some people up.
Found some money and, possibly, a gun.
And as a precautionary measure, all the schools were put under lockdown.
For all we know, he was nowhere near then.
So I guess I feel a little silly for worrying, now, but...well, the calls from the schools were pretty damn vague.
Just shows how much panic the imagination is capable of inducing when a loved one is mixed in with phrases like "under full lock-down" and "suspect is armed and dangerous."
To the school's credit, they never actually said the suspect was inside the school. But then again, they never said he wasn't.

So yeah.
I have to say, it was a pretty awful day.

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