thank you there used to be this kid at my school named Blake Blake faced a lot of bullying from pretty much everybody both behind his back and directly to his face it's not like he didn't deserve it though he was prone to violence and often got in trouble for screaming in teachers faces because he was clearly indoctrinated into some crazy ideas that went against what they teach in school I guess that means it's not totally his fault for how his parents raised him but that never stopped anybody Blake was just as physically repulsive as he
was in conversation he almost got kicked out of school for harassing a girl pretty badly after she rejected him for smelling like hot garbage only that had gone through then things would have ended differently it started one day when I was in History Class of Blake he stopped the class to dispute something the teacher said about the Civil War and it ended up becoming a huge thing the teacher was pretty cold with shutting Blake down with effects humiliating him pretty badly this led to Blake screaming a bunch of stuff about how the country had been
ruined then we all collectively laughed him off and he stormed out of the school that was a Friday over the course of the weekend Blake posted a bunch of stuff on his Snapchat pictures of him holding pieces from his dad's gun collection which he was known for bragging about extensively and pictures of him posing in front of a Nazi flag which was also his dad's I assume but the worst part of all was a photo of our history teacher printed out and taped to a cardboard box which he used for tallier practice with the caption
getting ready for school on Monday the posts were pretty chilling for years people had joked that Blake would do something like that one day but nobody ever thought he actually had the guts several people reported the post to the school but what they should have done was reported to the police nobody including myself took it seriously enough if I had there was no chance I would have gone to school until he was taken care of at school the following Monday from what I heard afterwards Blake came to school late during fifth period when we had
our American history class wasn't able to get into class like normally he was confronted by the school resource officer and a couple of admins who demanded to search his backpack that's when he drew the pistol and shot the resource officer and ran off I heard the shot from the other side of the school everything went silent moments later the lockdown order went out we all knew it was Blake I looked at my teacher who was white as a sheet all I could see were the bullet holes in the picture of his face from Blake's post
in my head after a few seconds he regained his composure and went through the procedure of locking the door and turning out the lights then ordering all of us to hide out of sight not a moment too soon either we all knew Blake was heading for him and all of us by proximity I barely had time to think to myself about how those dumb lockdown drills weren't so dumb anymore Blake made it to the classroom door in under a minute he started banging on the door and screaming I know you're in there I'm not an
idiot people started crying into their shirts to keep quiet others took out their phones and started live streaming or texting their loved ones assuming they wouldn't survive even I started to think that way I couldn't think of anything to do I didn't even have the presence of mine to think of what I might do to fight or protect myself if he were to get inside my mind was too afraid and it all felt so unreal the only thing running through my head was the fact that I was about to die while sitting on the tile
floor of my high school cowering in the darkness and a huddle of students that was about to become a pile of bodies suddenly a shot rang out the crying became screaming and everyone started to panic in the moment I made this place second decision and ran over to the window opting to jump from the Second Story instead of just sitting there and waiting for Blake to come in and shoot me a bunch of kids followed me but then I fumbled around somebody else shoved me out of the way because I was taking too long and
sent me to the floor that's when I looked back through the door and noticed something Blake was holding his face with both of his hands and the blood was seeping out between his fingers the door handle on the inside was lopsided like he had been trying to break in I sat there staring just trying to make sense of it in the chaos the teacher was yelling at us to get away from the windows and get back to hiding he started calling my name because I wasn't moving and that's when I blankly said the words I
think Blake shot himself said it pretty quietly for how loud the classroom was and I said it like a husk but enough people heard me to stop what they were doing and go silent a friend of mine ran to the door and looked out the window right as Blake was running away finally got up and stood there next to him blood was splattered across the floor and in the Newfound quietness I could hear Blake's cries of pain echoing through the hallway stupidly and against every bit of sense I had I tried to open the door
but it was broken not just locked as all doors are supposed to open from the inside it was broken we were trapped inside the classroom but at least Blake was gone hours later we were finally freed and slowly learned what had happened Blake tried to open the door by shooting the door handle but he ended up mangling the lock completely shut and causing the explosion of metal shrapnel which flew up right into his face a piece of Twisted Metal got lodged in his eye blinding him and that was the end of his Rampage a lucky
break for all of us and it goes to disprove the myth that you can open a lock just by shooting it Blake surrendered before leaving the school and was tried as an adult he'll be in prison for the next 20 years at least the resource officer he shot also got lucky and recovered without serious lasting effects to his health my high school is near an area with a lot of gang violence so lockdowns were a rather common occurrence however the one event that sticks out in my mind when I think back didn't actually have anything
to do with that the only time I actually felt scared wasn't because of a fugitive or shooting it was because of a student who everyone already knew was dangerous his name was Jason he was one of those kids that was crazy smart but had a lot of problems with authority focusing socializing and so on I'm sure everyone knows at least one kid like that from school he got suspended for bringing a knife to school once and then expelled the same year for trying to strangle a teacher with a shoelace he came back the next year
though after going to an intervention school for several months unfortunately it seems like he came back worse than when he left I got the pleasure of being stuck in the front office with him once when we both got in trouble for different things at around the same time and ended up sitting in there together the assistant principal was supposed to give both of us an individual talking to but it must have been a crazy day because we had to wait for her to get through talking to someone else first in the span of a few
minutes Jason talked my ear off about the kids he met in the intervention School like pyromaniacs and drug dealers and even gang members they were definitely a bad influence on him but honestly I think he should have stayed there he seems like he belonged he talks very highly of his experience and he said he made friends there which surprised me I was actually kind of entertained by the stories of what he got up to with those kids but then he dropped a piece of information that I knew was bad news Jason told me that someone
at the intervention school had helped him learn how to make a bomb right before I could ask him if he was serious the assistant principal came out of her office and called Jason in that was the last time and really the only time that I ever talked to him it was really weird because despite all of the stuff I heard about him he was actually in a great mood and seemed very happy even though he was in trouble again I thought it was possible that he might get better but I realize now the only thing
that made him happy was remembering the violent criminals he hung out with and thinking about ways to hurt people by the third week of school I'm sure he was dying to get back to that other school that's the only reason I can think of for what he did because otherwise it feels completely unprovoked unless he really just got a pleasure from doing it during second period one day soon after the day I talked to him he called in a bomb threat he was apprehended quickly but he refused to give up the location of the bomb
so the whole school was evacuated I vividly remember the feeling of my stomach doing a flip when I saw Jason's clear backpack sitting against the wall of the hallway we were walking through the inside was stuffed with a garbage bag so I knew I had to be the bomb I told one of the administrators who radioed it in I felt lucky then that I didn't go off when all those kids were filing out the building packed in like sardines I was shaking as I was walking out to the football field but I was able to
get a seat at the bleachers instead of having to stand we were out there in lockdown mode for hours baking in the hot sun and just waiting to go back inside bomb squatted to be called in to take care of the bag and the whole school had to be swept for other bombs afterwards I went from being scared to annoyed to board and then finally I was Restless I started horsing around with the people sitting next to me pretending I was getting a heat stroke and needed to lay down nobody was buying any of my
BS or making any room for me so as a joke I laid down across their feet it was all pretty funny and they were kicking me and laughing but while I was down there I saw something that petrified me something was taped to the Bottom of the Sea right in front of my face I pushed the kids legs apart to get a better look and of course he thought I was being weird until he saw the look on my face he was sitting right on top of a bomb it was a box wrapped in duct
tape with a no that said this is the real one I swear I flipped out and jumped from the bleachers twisting my ankle and causing a massive Panic as everyone caught wind of the danger and fled all at once with nowhere safe to run and a thousand kids running out of control the whole situation was almost disastrous a couple freshmen got trampled and ended up with broken bones kids hopped the fences and ran out into the road swarmed into nearby shops a lot of kids took the opportunity to just run all the way home by
the time the Panic stopped the school was basically deserted I'm sure if Jason ever found out he would die of laughter what really makes it embarrassing though is the fact that it was all fake none of the bombs were real the thing is Jason was totally smart enough to make real bombs and actually kill people and the only reason he didn't was because his goal wasn't to go to prison for a bunch of years but to go to juvie or another intervention School all that fear and panic and wasted time was just part of a
sick joke Jason was playing what makes me shudder is knowing that if he had decided to go through with it a lot of people would have died and I would have very likely been one of them nobody was prepared for the threat he pointed out a gigantic weakness in the school's response misplacements would have been extremely deadly if they weren't just fake bombs I don't know where Jason is now but I hope he stays far away from me for the rest of my life I live in Oklahoma right in the middle of Tornado Alley extreme
weather drills have been a frequent part of school life for decades long before kids had to deal with all the other emergency drills I went to middle school back in the 90s and I have clear memories of huddling on the floor in the interior hallways of my school with the lights off and my butt basically sticking up in the air at least once a month for years as a girl I always felt uncomfortable like I was exposing myself to all the teachers that were walking down the hall but no matter what I said I would
be forced to follow instructions I came to dread the extreme weather lockdowns more than the idea of a deadly tornado itself tornado might hit nearby once in a blue moon but I felt like I had no choice but to Moon all the weirdest teachers at school every month even worse the lockdowns actually happened more often than that because real extreme weather situations are very common during certain times of the year one day in May of my seventh grade year such a situation occurred at the time my classroom was one of the temporary buildings they put
up around the school to alleviate overcrowding everyone called them Portables but they weren't portable they were just flimsy buildings the procedure for anyone who found themselves in a portable at the time of a weather emergency was to immediately evacuate and take shelter in the main building of the school leaving everything behind including backpacks everybody got on the ground and covered their heads with their hands and sat in the most uncomfortable awkward and questionable position for much longer than we usually did in the drills the teachers told us there was an extreme cyclonic thunderstorm with a
high probability to produce tornadoes heading straight for us and that we wouldn't be allowed to get up and go back to class until it passed by all of that was incomprehensible jargon to me at the time but there are words I have since learned to take seriously most of the time those lockdowns felt ridiculous and overdone but that day as the Halloween winds grew louder in The Haunting well of the tornado sirens droned on and on in the Chit Chat stopped in a real sense of dread clouded over us initially there was a morbid anticipation
mixed in with it I was a little excited to experience a real storm without having to be concerned about my home getting destroyed didn't care if the school got wrecked as long as I didn't get hurt but it seemed unlikely that it would be like that there was a part of me that I actually hoped there would be a tornado it would make showing my rear end to the weird chorus teacher worth it The Hope didn't last long however it was already dark inside because the lights were off but at the start there was still
natural light coming in from outside over the course of mere minutes the storm began to block out the sun until it felt like an unnatural night had descended upon the world the winds continued to get stronger shaking the doors like the storm itself was trying to be this way in then the hell came smacking against the door like a volley of meteors before long the once quiet bushed hallway was afflicted with a cacophony of noise peer gripped everyone it was palpable that's when The Telltale sound whispered into our ears quiet at first the low grumbling
growing Roar of rushing winds like a passing freight train steadily intensifying as we all knew the monster was drawing near it was undeniable by then even if we couldn't see it that a tornado was on the grounds and not far away and with every passing second it seemed more and more certain that it would hit us directly a lot of kids started to cry teachers yelled at us to stay calm but they couldn't conceal the fear in their voices when the walls started to shake they finally took cover too for a few minutes we were
all equalized in this compromising position that was supposed to keep us safe and now nobody had to be worried about anyone peeping out their crack we all had greater concerns the air itself vibrated at the frequency of a tornado I could feel it in my chest outside I heard Carnage and destruction debris slamming into the doors just to fly off into the distance in the next instant it was like the world was getting shoved into a wood chipper the most terrifying moment was when the windows couldn't take distress anymore and shattered a torrent of air
rushed into the Hall the storm had finally found its way inside and there's no more escaping it it felt inevitable that the whole school was about to be ripped off its foundation and all of us flung into the sky along with it I clenched my teeth and I prayed I'm sure we all prayed somehow by God's grace it worked just when we thought it was about to stomp on our heads it began to grow quieter at last we could all breathe a sigh of relief over the next few minutes all the growing signs of danger
that preceded the tornado reversed and undid themselves until the sun shined once again and the air was still after waiting several more minutes to be safe lockdown was finally lifted and we could stand up my legs and back were sore but I was unscathed the school was intact and I could go back to class and get my stuff except that wasn't entirely true the main building was damaged but still standing I guess but as I walked outside to the field of Portables I witnessed the true Devastation that had just unfolded Portables were just gone besides
a bit of rubble and some pipe sticking out the ground there wasn't a single trace left of them not even cinder blocks remained everything I had in my bag was erased my scrapbook my notebooks my diary all of it taken far away with no hope of having it returned knowing that if I had stayed in my classroom during the tornado that I would surely have been utterly destroyed along with it put a feeling in my chest I'll never forget it's hard to describe realizing you've come so close to death at such a young age ever
since then I've never taken the threat of severe weather lightly it is a part of my life in Tornado Alley but I was born and raised in Oklahoma and it's where I will stay
