Lockdown...Now Locked Up

I drove into work this morning to find that Lowell Blvd. was closed, with police cars blocking streets and flares directing traffic. I thought perhaps someone important was coming to visit...then I saw other police cars at the various neighborhood schools. I thought then about a security problem, perhaps a bomb threat or something. I parked my car a block away, figuring that if the situation was too risky, the police officer will keep me from entering. When I asked if I could go in, he said yes. Then, the Father Woody van came by and insisted they drive me to my building. It was in the Father Woody van that I heard there was some sort of armed robber on the loose in the neighborhood. They dropped me off at the door and I reluctantly came inside.

When I came in, the front desk person was surprised I was let in. She told me the campus was officially on lock down. None of my co-workers, nor my boss, were in the office. I stayed in my office with the door locked, lights off and my trusty grapefruit knife, just in case. The campus came off lock down about 45 minutes later and my co-workers came trailing in. My boss came in, joked about the whole situation, and expected us to resume back to work. Thus, we went from Lock down to Locked Up.

I had a few revelations from this experience. The first is that my supervisor really doesn't care much about us. She was on campus, shut in another building, well before 8am and didn't call any of my co-workers to touch base. When she came in, she joked about the situation and expected us all to get back to work immediately. The second thought is that what happened at Virginia Tech is now much more incomprehensible to me. There was a murder on campus and they let classes resume...and then so many more people were killed because of this. In this situation today I felt angry that they let me in the building and this was a robbery in the neighborhood. The magnitude is so different but it opened my eyes to the experiences that other people have.

Ahhh....back to work I must go. This wasn't the typical Monday morning!