5 Years After "The Tragedy"... Can I Talk About This Now?

*Deep breath*...

I'm ready.  I think.  Here we go.

September 27, 2006.

It was flower dissection day.  I was 4 months pregnant.  It was sunny, with just some wisps of clouds.  A perfect fall day.  It was Mo's birthday and she brought in red velvet cupcakes.  I honestly can't say if they ever got eaten.  I imagine them being among the half-rotten uneaten lunch debris found in the Canyon Room four days later, like what would be left behind after the Rapture.  A moment frozen in time, never, ever to be reclaimed.  The moment before our lives were changed forever.

I was on lunch duty.  After finishing eating, I took the kids out to recess.  About 10 minutes before it was time to go inside, the nurse came running out across the blacktop, saying get the kids in.  She wasn't particularly hysterical, just matter of fact.  We must get the kids in. NOW.

We blew the whistle, called for the kids to come in.  A few of them, confused, started walking towards the building.  Most of them didn't stop playing.  They looked at me like I was nuts.  The nurse got more insistent.  Get them in RIGHT. NOW.  I had no idea what was going on.

I ran all over the playground, yelling at kids to get inside.  They knew it wasn't time to go in.  Many of the kids would later recall this was the moment they realized I was pregnant.  Running around the enormous playground, holding my bouncing bump, yelling for everyone to go inside.

We finally got all the kids inside (or so I hoped, I never knew how many I had out there...).  We crammed all of the 6th and 7th graders into the two classrooms closest to the playground end of the building.  It was tight.  Really, really tight.  We had no information about what was going on, or what to do really, so we just hunkered the kids down on the floor in the dark and tried to keep them quiet.  There was yelling and banging in the halls once in a while, but mostly it was just eerily quiet.  We closed the blinds, so even though we knew something was going on out there, we really didn't see anything.

We sat there for a really long time.  It might have been 10 minutes, or an hour.  I can't tell you, but it was interminable.  Things started falling apart and we couldn't keep the kids quiet.  Somehow (??) a rumor started that there was a gun in the school.  I don't know how.  Maybe someone had a cell phone.  Maybe the teacher checked her email.  Maybe someone picked out meaning from the far away mumbled shouting we heard outside.  There were like 50 or 60 kids in the room, and mumblings turned to pushing and joking around and being goofy middle schoolers.  I told them over and over again to be quiet, and they just couldn't.  None of us knew what was going on, and it seemed to the kids to be some kind of weird drill.  We could only hold them silent for so long.  Two kids were bickering, and one told the other to shut the fuck up.  In a moment of panic, I said to one, "shut the fuck up before I kick your ass myself."  Yes.  I said that.  And I'd do it again.  I'm sorry.

That seemed to hold them for what felt like another 10 minutes/2 hours?  Eventually someone came to the door and said we were going to be evacuated and that we were to move absolutely silently, with our hands above our heads.  They opened the door and, ignoring the guns pointed vaguely in our direction, we stumbled our way out the door, across the expanse of blacktop, and into the woods.  We had no idea where to go from there, but knew we needed to be out of sight from the school.  We were all still shocked and dazed, and honestly I don't think it had really sunken in that it still wasn't just some weird drill or misunderstanding.

We trudged over the barbed wire and through the bushes (as well as we could... I remember looking over and seeing the copy repair man, the art teacher, and the PE teacher hiding the kids in wheelchairs in the bushes in the ditch.  There was no way they could push those chairs up the hill through the woods...), and finally settled in a field out of sight of the school.  We tried to keep the kids sitting down, but they were uncomfortable in the grass and stickers and dirt.  Some kids were crying, others were acting like they were still on recess.  They were all thirsty, and hungry, and confused.  They needed to pee.  The 8th grade science teacher, who happened to also be my 7th grade math teacher, pulled together a study group, and had most of the 8th grade class under control reviewing chemistry.  The 6th and 7th graders were all over the place.  We couldn't stop the rumors.  A few adults had radios, and were clearly in communication with ...  whoever they were communicating with.  They tried to keep out of earshot, but some kids must have overheard.  Or received cell calls...  I don't know what was going on.  It felt like chaos about to erupt.  Someone said, "my sister is in 10th grade!"  Everyone suddenly needed to make a phone call.  I continued to push an attitude of, no one knows what's going on right now, these are all rumors, you are safe here, let's just hold tight until we are told what to do.  No one uses a cell phone or they are dead meat.  No one plays in the rumor mill or I'm rolling some heads.  We need to stay calm and focus on what we can control...

I had sort of begun feeling like things were getting under control...  At least the kids had finally gotten bored of panicking and started just chit-chatting instead.  That's when the helicopters arrived.  A whole swarm of them.  Police helicopters, news helicopters...  Suddenly I was certain that we were on live TV, and that was when it was searingly clear that we were in deep shit.  I needed a phone and a toilet in the worst possible way.  Luckily the mom whose property we were bunkered down on came down to see if we needed water or anything else, and she took me up to her house to use the bathroom.  I saw a flash on the TV as we were coming in the house.  Helicopter-view of our little gulley full of ducks in a pond.  Or fish in a barrel...  I couldn't get back to them fast enough. I called my mom real quick - I knew she'd have the news on TV.  I don't know what I said to her.  I think I told her I was okay.  Weird that I can't remember that conversation...

We scoured the kids for paper and writing utensils.  Since all of them were either at lunch or recess, and had to leave the school with hands in the air, almost no one had anything on them.  We found napkins and love notes or something to write on and a few stubs of pencil.  We knew we were to be evacuated by school bus, and we had to be responsible for each and every one of our kids.  We got the kids in groups, made our lists, checked them over and over again.  Waited and waited and waited.

Finally the buses came.  We had our hands full keeping the kids from sprinting out of control.  We made them walk in lines and then had to count and recount them as they got on the buses.  We were told we would be taking them to the elementary school, where their parents would pick them up.  We were, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES, to release any child in our custody to anyone but their parents or guardians.  We rehearsed what we would do when we got to the elementary.  How to get the kids off the buses, where we would take them, how to get the parents to sign them out in an orderly fashion.  I had a job.  I knew what to do.

The buses took us down the dump road, a detour that bypassed the school and the town of Bailey.  As we passed by the football field on the way up the detour road, we saw someone on a stretcher being carried to a helicopter.  My stomach lurched.  I focused on my responsibility.

When we turned down the road towards the elementary school, we met a mob we could not have possibly anticipated.  The road was positively bogged with cars and trucks.  They had given up any hope of driving to the school, and had abandoned their cars where they stood.  There was no room for a single car to drive through, not to mention a line of school buses.  The parents were rushing the buses, pounding on the windows, screaming and crying, pushing and clamoring over each other, and yelling into cell phones.  My dear friend Judy documents the parents' experience here.  The buses honked, the parents pounded, the kids tried to open windows, some threatened to climb out.  I had a job I needed to do, and did my best to make them sit down and stop screaming.

Finally we arrived at the elementary school, the same mob of parents following us the entire way.  I took my post at the front of the bus to address the parents and let them know my plan for releasing them in an orderly way to the proper guardians, and explaining my need to keep track of who was accounted for, etc.

Just as I was beginning to release some of the children, a police officer came to my bus and told all of the kids to get off and find their parents.  I tried arguing that I couldn't let them just rush out of the bus and run away, that I had to keep track of them, and help them find their parents.  He told them to get off, and in the shouting match that ensued between the two of us, parents started pushing me aside so they could grab their kids off the bus.  The kids were screaming to get out.  They could see their parents, and wanted out.  I looked that police officer in the eye and told him that he was now responsible for the safety of each and every one of those kids now that he had taken my job away from me.  I crumpled in a corner of the kindergarten classroom and cried for I don't know how long.  I would fixate on this for nothing short of 2 years... That police officer stripping me of my responsibility to keep order and return those kids to their parents safely.

We were eventually told the important events that had occurred.  I threw up a few times.  They wouldn't let us go back to the school to get our cars.  We were stuck in Bailey.  Eventually I got a ride with a handful of other teachers who live in town, in a car that had been parked at the elementary school.  My mom had picked up Dylan, and met me at the Fort.  I was in utter shock.  Thank god for my mom...  She took me to the lake at clement park and I think we walked around it 4 times before I had finally come down enough to acknowledge my 4 year old son's need for dinner.  We went somewhere.  My stepdad met us there.  They ate.  I don't know what I did.  I think I cried, and scared the waitress.  And my poor kid.

The next 4 days were like peeling an onion of agony.  I mourned as a teacher, as a parent, as a former student, as a member of the human race.  I felt sorry for Emily, I felt sorry for her twin brother, I felt sorry for the kids who ended up at the hospital waiting for the news that she was gone, I felt sorry for Emily's parents, for all of the parents, I felt sorry for the other kids in that classroom, I felt sorry for the teacher (who I had as an English teacher in my own highschool years), I felt sorry for the sheriff (who was my driver's ed teacher), I felt sorry for the kids who were locked in lockdown in the library right below the room where all the shit went down, I felt sorry for the kids who made up stories on national TV, placing themselves closer to the danger than they really were, I felt sorry for the principal and the superintendent, who would some day have to answer for their own decisions, I felt sorry for every kid who would ever graduate from Platte Canyon High School, I felt sorry for my own children, who would grow up in a world where a bad man could come into a school and kill a little girl, I felt sorry for the Pikes Peak mental health professionals who were there to offer us help none of us wanted (or at least knew how to accept).  I felt sorry for the Columbine teachers who came to help us through our pain, while reliving their own.  I felt sorry for the kids who didn't get to go to school for 4 days, waiting for normalcy to return, while their teachers figured out how to put themselves together enough to teach in that building again.  I felt sorry for all of us.  I felt a lot sorry for me.  I felt sorry for feeling sorry for myself.

Then there was the memorial motorcycle ride that was would have been healing, had we not all been feeling so sorry for ourselves.  I have spent the past 5 years being ass-hurt by the memorial organization spending so much time honoring the "first responders", that they forgot to honor the real "first responders."  I am not proud to say that I've felt sorry for myself and the rest of us for a hell of a long time. 

I am done feeling sorry for myself.  Today I am honoring my community and Emily Keyes by loving the kids I have right now as hard as I can.  I am proud to call myself a Bailey native, and I am working to make Bailey proud of me too.

I love you guys.