This Wednesday there was an incident at our son’s high school. Someone called the West Van police to say they’d seen two youths approaching the school with what looked like a rifle.
The cops responded immediately and in force. They surrounded the school and searched the premises for the youths.
In the meantime the school implemented it’s silent lockdown procedure. They had tested this in September. No one thought we’d be using it for real. West Vancouver is hardly the place for such scary antics.
We first heard about the lockdown when Greg texted us from under his desk in his English Lit class. I then tried calling the West Van police station but got no response. I assume they were all at the school.
Then I tried the web. No news seemed to be available until I went to twitter. I had dabbled with twitter before this and was not sure what use it could be. It seemed to be something which allowed anyone to text or post the most boring of everyday events up for the world to see.
But when you are anxiously trying to get news of what is going on, it becomes an amazing tool. My tweets, as your posts are called, even resulted in journalists from The Province newspaper and News 1130 radio calling me up for more information.
As it became clear that the danger was over, and most likely had never existed, the allure of being a cub reporter overtook the anxiety. I was amused to see my tweets being reported (anonymously) on various news sites.
Both Sue and I are on twitter [links at end]. Sue will be using it to keep her real estate clients informed about the market, tweeting about open houses and the like. I am not sure what I will do with it. It will seem very boring, and thankfully so, after the excitement of breaking news.
Greg is ok. The worst of the event was it spanned lunch hour and he was starving by the time the 3 hour lockdown was over. And teenage boys need to eat regularly and in large quantity.
[Our twitter id's:
Sue: http://twitter.com/Sue604
Frank: http://twitter.com/frank604 ]