Garden of Eden Lock-down

There's nothing better when TV parlance comes to real life. Case in point, yesterday's five hour search for a despondent Iraq War veteran with a gun in Eden, NY. It started around noon when the man's sister called police to report that her brother was armed and sounded as if he might kill himself. About 60 police officers from three agencies began looking for him. At around 1:30 school officials were notified of the situation. Rather than move the children, the media and school authorities notified parents that they should pick up their kids. Of course, the rumor mill kicked in and false reports of the distressed man being in the building started. A school official was quoted in the paper as saying, "We have a building full of kids with cell phones,”. Okay, rewind, what's wrong with that sentence? Those little brats were allowed to get their chat on? I thought the media and the school were doing the notifying. Nothing like letting the kids run the show! I left work yesterday afternoon and heard the "lock-down" term being bandied about as it always is in these situations. I always thought schools were prisons where you suffered through the bullshit of forced socialization. I couldn't wait to get out. I never thought the prison lexicon would be so commonplace--especially in light of Virginia Tech.