The man was a Methuen policeman, Detective Ron Valliere, playing the role of a highly aggravated parent who said he had a gun and wanted his son immediately. It was all part of a coordinated lockdown drill, an exercise designed to test the training of police, special operations teams and the school administrators, teachers and students.

OK, there were lockdown drills when I was in school, but they did not involve police officers yelling like crazy people.

Administrators and teachers at Timony were not notified in advance. Scannell and Solomon told principal Timothy Miller about the drill when they arrived just before 10 a.m. yesterday. Immediately after Miller was informed, Valliere ran down the hall, yelling, "I want my son! I want my son!"

Uh, what? Administrators and teachers didn't know in advance? Who started this, the police? It also stands to reason that the students (and read up, this was an elementary school) obviously didn't know about it. When I was in school, at least someone at the school knew these things would happen, and again, THEY DIDN'T SIMULATE AN ACTUAL GUNMAN.

"The parent" wound up in the auditorium, where he told several students there to leave and hid behind a screen on the stage. The students, who were helping another teacher with Revolutionary War props and did not hear the drill announcement, complied and filed into a hall, where physical education teacher Brian Angelari spotted them and led them into a downstairs room.

So not only were students completely unaware of this drill, some weren't even aware it had started. I'm sure it wasn't traumatizing to have a yelling nutcase run into your classroom.

Solomon said yesterday he received a phone call from a parent who wanted notification before drills so she could keep her child out of school that day. "But that defeats the purpose. They would be the child who wouldn't know what to do when everyone else does," he said.

It's not hard to figure out. It's not like individuality is allowed in schools as it is. Amazing a parent would want to avoid having her kid scared *bleep*less for the sake of a "security drill."

Soon after, a special operations team in full gear — but with fake blue rifles — filed into the Timony and positioned themselves around the entrances to the auditorium, barrels trained on the stage. Police talked "the parent" out from behind the screen, and eventually into allowing two officers to reach him and secure him in handcuffs.

Again: Elementary schoolers exposed to their school turning into a hostage zone. Yeah, the guns were fake, but how were they supposed to know that? Remember, THEY DON'T KNOW IT'S A DRILL. For all they know, this is real and they are in real danger.

"They did really good," Angelari said of the students he found in the hallway. "One girl teared up, but I told her, 'It's okay. The police are on it.'"

Remember the latest Random Questions thread, where I said the worst thing about childhood is being condescended to? This is was what I was talking about.

The girl said after the drill that her friend helped keep her calm. Cam Boes, 11, in the fifth grade, said they did not know that the whole thing was an exercise until Miller announced that it was over.

We're not actually in danger! What was the point then?

It just burns me up to expose children to such trauma in the name of security theater, especially when the odds of a shooting at a specific school aren't actually high. You can do a drill so they know what to do without actually simulating a gunmen and a massive police action. This would be like setting off smoke bombs during a fire drill. Plus now they've seen it for "real," if it actually does happen, you run the risk of Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Argh.