Ok, so I left off about two and a half hours into this thing. The lockdown was put in effect at about 9:30 that morning, so once we hit the three hour mark it was 12:30 in the afternoon. I was supposed to be eating lunch, which my growling stomach made me all to aware of. At the time, me and three of my friends were playing BS, the card game, and I had begun to shake from the lack of food (hadn't eat anything for breakfast either). They thought I was getting nervous because I lied and called on me. Silly them, I was tellin' the truth! *Ahem!* Anyway...people noticed it was lunch time and started getting worried. Everyone had their own theory as to what the school might do about the problem.
"They'll just let us starve!"
"They'll have to call off the lockdown!"
"We don't need to eat! We need to go to the bathroom!"
...Yeah, those administrators, we still hadn't seen 'em.
My theory was that they would have people bring us lunch. I mean, they couldn't just let us leave the classroom, right? Of course though, everyone says they wouldn't do that because there are over 4,000 kids in the school and it would take waaay too long. After about 20 minutes, everyone is back to laying on the floor looking half dead and listening to their mp3's. That's pretty much what everyone was doing up until about 1:00 when everyone was supposed to be done eating lunch. People's bodies started trying to get back to the daily schedule. Gradually, over half of the class realized they had to go to the restroom. People began to beg with the teacher to call the administrators. Their answers was always the same, "I've sent emails! What more can I do? You just gotta wait from orders from the boss." One kid yelled across the room, "Mr. McNulty! I need to use the restroom!" So he says, "So do I, but there's nothing I can do!" Honestly, for high school kids we all sounded like kindergardeners.
"I gotta go to the bathroom!"
"I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!"
"Where's the food!"
My strategy was to sit at my desk and sleep so that time would go by faster. Unfortunately, my friend had other plans. Every time I would be just about to get into an actual sleep, my friend would grab my sides and yell. It scared the crap out of me every time too. I would always bolt up and gasp his name, "MIKE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!" He would chuckle and say, "...Nothin'. How 'bout you?" As you can imagine, I never got to get any sleep. As it turns out, Mike really had to go to the bathroom. He was talking about using the sinks in the back of the room. At one point I actually thought he was going to! He said that he decided not to though so that he wouldn't freak everyone out. Normally, I would say, "Yeah right. That's just your excuse." But with Mike, I think he really would have done it.
By 2:00, two more people had walked out besides the first girl. Again, the teacher just called them in and the cops picked them up. Once he had taken care of that he turned the news on with the volume just audible enough to hear clearly. The school was on the television! There were cop cars pulled up ON the sidewalks blocking every door. People started to freak out thinking there was a maniac inside the school or something. Then, the reporter came on screen and began to tell the story. Apparently, there had been a bank robbery. A bank-robber went into the bank less than a block away, jumped over the counter, and shot the teller in the stomach. The teller was a female who was FIVE MONTHS PREGNANT...WITH TWINS!! Our jaws dropped. Before we could recover from that, we found out that they found gloves similar to the suspects in a lot near the school and had caught two students trying to get inside the school! So now I'm thinking, Great, we'll be stuck here all night at this rate. Everyone else feels the same thing. The teacher switches the channel over to TV Land and we all sigh and go back to standing around the edges of the room or sitting at our desks. No one wanted to lay on the ground because they all had to go to the restroom so bad. My friends and I were talking about the robbery and who the guy who did it might be. Our theory was, the father of the twins or the angry boyfriend.
By 2:40, we were all about to die of hunger and/or explode from being unable to relieve ourselves. We were all getting anxious. School normally let out at about 2:50. No one knew if we would get to go home or not. By this time, Laverne and Shirley, an old TV show, had about driven us crazy. It seemed like everyone was watching the clock. Waiting from a word from any sign of hope. At 2:48, the principals voice came on overhead. Everyone's ears pricked up, waiting for the decision. The principal says:
"First off, I'd like to thank everyone for their cooperation."
Hurray, we get to go home!
"I realize it has been a very long day and that some students have not gotten their lunches yet."
...yet? What's he talking about?
"We are still working on delivering lunch to the remaining classes."
WHAT?! Forget lunch, we wanna go home!
"However!"
Now what?!
"Students will have dismissal at the 3:05 bell."
YES!!! We ARE going home!
"Once again, I would like to thank all 3,000 staff members and the student for handling this so professionally."
Everyone was estatic. We were finally getting out of that tiny, windowless, dark room! Everyone grabbed their bags and waited for the clock to hit 2:50. Slowly and steadily, my teacher walked over to the door. Two minutes and we were free! Everyone stood up and crowded closer to the door. My teacher smiled, opened the door, and said, "Better run or you'll have to wait in line when you get to the bathrooms and miss your bus." We stood there for a minute in disbelief, then bolted out the door. EVERYONE thanked him on their way out the door. For the most part, everyone ran too. I was amazed I didn't hear people singing in the bathrooms after holding it for so long. Eventually, I made my way to my locker. My friend showed up at her locker, which was about four lockers down from mine, and started to complain to me about how they hadn't gotten food until the last ten minutes. I was like, "Don't complain okay because I never got food. AND I didn't get to go to the bathroom either! Plus I was stuck with Mike!" My friend gives me a big hug and says, "You poor thing! I feel sooo bad for you!" We laughed about it a bit and then went to catch our busses. I was eating and using the restroom as soon as I got home.
The next day, everyone was telling their stories of the lockdown. Apparently, EVERYONE else got to go to the bathroom. Most others got lunch too. I was sooo mad! One guy told me that a boy got a referral for peeing in a bottle. I laughed and said, "I could believe that." My friend and I were drained though. She was like, "I'm soo tired and I don't know why." Then I said, "I know, me too. I can't figure it out either, I mean, its not like we used up all our energy yesterday!"
Yeah, so on Tuesday, I was stuck in a five hour lockdown in CHEM/PHYS! of all places. I would've rather been in Japanese, but obviously I didn't have much of a choice. Anyway, I have to go to school so I'll hopefully be on later with more crazy stories. Hopefully we make it past third period! Maybe I can find a video of the new report for you all.
