Bubble Ball and Duck N'Cover

Professional basketball is in a bubble in Florida and will start play July 30 with teams expected to stay there to play all the season. Don't think it is like going to scout camp. This enclosure has gourmet chefs, maids, every kind of game or recreation that can be imagined. On paper it looks like players will be able to go with this plan and not come down with the virus that we are all dreading.

Plans have a way of looking good before being tested. In Dallas when I began teaching in 1960(Okay, say it. "She is as old as dirt."), people were all talking about nuclear threats. Russia was adding to its stockpile, we were adding to ours, fallout shelters were being built, preachers and politicians were saying the world was soon coming to an end. So Dallas and all schools decided we should have a way to protect students if an attack came. The principal would ring the bell with ten short rings(had to be different from a fire drill signal), and students were to drop beside their desks, put their heads under the desk top, and cover their heads with their arms. It was the magical Duck 'N Cover drill. We gave a picture to every student for them to copy, and on a certain day, the principal rang the bell the required time, and the students did the proper action. I guess I went under my desk, too. After a few minutes the all clear signal was given over the loud speaker, and everyone congratulated the students on their fine work.

But some parents complained to the schools that in the event of a real attack, they didn't want their children at school. So schools sent home a sheet of paper with options that parents were to check after they had made a decision. They were:(1)I want my child to stay at school;(2)I want my child to go by the nearest elementary school, pick up a younger sibling, and walk home;(3)I want my child to walk home;(4)I want to pick up my child. The paper came back, and proper information was given every teacher. It was decided that our side of Dallas, the south side which wasn't very affluent, would try the drill first, and parents were notified that it would be in the afternoon on a Thursday so they could get ready. Thursday after lunch the bells sounded.  Complete chaos erupted. Some students who were supposed to walk home decided they would rather stay with their friends and wouldn't budge. Some who were supposed to pick up siblings walked right by the elementary school on their way home, and the younger children were wailing because they thought they were going to die and older brother/sister didn't care. Some who were supposed to stay at school decided they would leave with anybody walking away. Parents caused traffic jams because they parked wherever they felt like it and rushed to the school steps. It was awful. So Dallas quickly scrapped that plan and went back to the tried-and-true Duck "N Cover.

And sometimes plans that aren't plans do work. One spring the sky turned black around Wilson, and our marvelous secretary Linda had the radio blaring because the National Weather Service said a tornado was on the ground northeast of Tahoka and could give us a direct hit.The superintendent, both principals, and all coaches were gone somewhere to a meeting, so we teachers put our heads together and decided the big thick high school walls would save us. We got all the kids in the halls with their backs against those walls, and waited...and waited. The wind howled, the rain pelted, but the tornado had picked up and headed away. So when we thought it was safe, we sent kids back to classrooms to finish outlines and paragraphs as usual. Or maybe we were finishing A Tale of Two Cities with me reading chapters out loud. You can still remember the first sentence of the book, can't you, because it describes that day, any hard experience you ever went through, and today's fears.

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."