Two years ago, when I was interviewing for my current role at work, my then-future manager told me that there were nine or ten weeks a year when the job becomes particularly intense. These weeks are clustered in three groups, dispersed throughout the year, and require focused attention with all hands on deck. Easy peasy, right?
As it turns out, life doesn't actually care about all hands on deck. No matter how much pre-planning in which I engage I've found that something is going to hit the fan every times time one of the events rolls around at the very moment when I am least able to comfortably deal with it.
A couple weeks ago, just days into the latest cluster, I hosted a meeting during which several people sat in the room with me and perhaps half a dozen more dialed in. At one point, my cell phone buzzed a tone letting me know that my son's school had just sent a text. A second tone alerted me to an e-mail. Since someone else was talking at the moment, I cast a furtive glance at the text and read only "lock down...911...shots fired".
It's amazing how fast one can assess a situation. This was "my" meeting, using my telecon and e-meeting details. Should I stop the discussion anyway? Hand my laptop to the nearest colleague and sprint to the door? Rush to my car to drive the 13ish miles to the school? Call to find out what's happening? No. I could change nothing at all about the incident in the 15 minutes left in the meeting and, although it was tempting to call, I knew that doing so would result in 1) no answer and/or 2) distracting people from executing whatever plan had been set in motion.
To spare you an even longer story, I'll just drop here that everything turned out fine. Although there was, in fact, shooting on campus there was no "active shooter" (God, what a horrible expression and even worse that I can just put it there and you know exactly what I mean) just two adults not connected with the school displaying colossally poor judgment. By the time I got back to my desk after the meeting, a second set of texts and e-mails arrived letting parents know that the episode was over and all were well.
Later I recalled how I'd almost felt the thoughts careening through my head, trying to figure out the best course of action. I'm surprised at how calm I remained in the time between the first and second texts, but I don't know what else I could have done that would have been productive. My son came home and he was full of stories about the lock down and what the announcement said and the rumors he heard throughout the rest of the day. To him, it was an adventure, a crazy thing that happened that broke up the day. "Were you scared?" he wanted to know.
A couple weeks ago, just days into the latest cluster, I hosted a meeting during which several people sat in the room with me and perhaps half a dozen more dialed in. At one point, my cell phone buzzed a tone letting me know that my son's school had just sent a text. A second tone alerted me to an e-mail. Since someone else was talking at the moment, I cast a furtive glance at the text and read only "lock down...911...shots fired".
It's amazing how fast one can assess a situation. This was "my" meeting, using my telecon and e-meeting details. Should I stop the discussion anyway? Hand my laptop to the nearest colleague and sprint to the door? Rush to my car to drive the 13ish miles to the school? Call to find out what's happening? No. I could change nothing at all about the incident in the 15 minutes left in the meeting and, although it was tempting to call, I knew that doing so would result in 1) no answer and/or 2) distracting people from executing whatever plan had been set in motion.
To spare you an even longer story, I'll just drop here that everything turned out fine. Although there was, in fact, shooting on campus there was no "active shooter" (God, what a horrible expression and even worse that I can just put it there and you know exactly what I mean) just two adults not connected with the school displaying colossally poor judgment. By the time I got back to my desk after the meeting, a second set of texts and e-mails arrived letting parents know that the episode was over and all were well.
Later I recalled how I'd almost felt the thoughts careening through my head, trying to figure out the best course of action. I'm surprised at how calm I remained in the time between the first and second texts, but I don't know what else I could have done that would have been productive. My son came home and he was full of stories about the lock down and what the announcement said and the rumors he heard throughout the rest of the day. To him, it was an adventure, a crazy thing that happened that broke up the day. "Were you scared?" he wanted to know.
A's school was on lockdown (something like stay-in-place lockdown or something like that) last week. She thought it was a drill and was surprised at dinner when I said that, no - school had emailed that something dangerous was suspected and they wanted the parents to discuss it with them. So. Flippin'. Scary.
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