The Smell of Danger
Ah the trip down memory lane and the lingering smell of grade school linoleum.
On the lunch hour sirens wailed, testing for any emergency. On the ten o'clock news children hunched in hallways in preparation for disaster. Central Wisconsin meteorologist Mike Breunling talked tornados, and I am thinking of the smell of danger.
That is if the smell of Danger is chalk, sweat, and old sneakers.
Anyone who's been an American schoolchild in the last 50 years has done the drill, some kind of drill, whether it be Nuclear, Fire, or Flood. As a child of the late 70's in Southern Wisconsin our drill just happened to be tornado.
1978 and Kindergarten with Mrs. Lodell, a woman who must have known God, had a modified beehive, and was a teacher since before my mother was born. She was 50 at least.
There must have been a lot of tornados that year because I remember spending a lot of time face down between Joey O. and Jenny R. Every day that spring after the snow melted we would practice. The teacher would stop us at our play and announce a drill. We would get into our line and walk into the hall. It was every elementary school hallway, lined with coat hooks under a wooden shelf at eye level, paper umbrellas and flowers with our names on them covering the walls.
We crouched there beneath the coats, away from windows, heads down and our hands over our necks. No talking please. The smell of old lunchs filtering over from the first grade side of the hall. The smell of chalk dust. Wet boots. That indescribable smell of institutional hard tile, brown or teal or dark orange.
Mrs. Lodell was tough. Mrs. Lodell was always looking out for us. No kneeling allowed, squat please. Don't put your hands on your head, Danny. Cover your neck below your hair. I was sure it was the squatting that saved us. Other children might slouch but we were prepared.
We were seemingly there for hours and the sky always looked stormy. Was it the real thing or a test? Was Mrs. Lodell losing it in her old age? I have no idea, no one bothers to tell a Kindergartener. Or maybe it didn't matter it was always the real thing to us.
//Tam
11:13:24 PM  ,
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