beneath the desk / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page beneath the desk.

UncannyClown276 17 Feb 2023 04:37

i started writing this piece last week, when someone called in a series of fake school shooter threats across michigan. while i was editing, michigan state university was shot up.

this piece isn't about what it's like to be in an active shooter situation. i don't know what that's like. it's about what it's like to spend your formative years in a place where mass shootings are so common that you have to drill for them, where they don't tell you if it's a drill or not and every minute that passes under your desk in the dark is a moment where you wonder more and more if it could be real this time.

thank you to floorboards, stygian blue, and meltedbee for feedback.

Rounderhouse 17 Feb 2023 04:44

damn.

meltedbee 17 Feb 2023 04:51

It's common that I find a piece on here that makes me sit and think awhile, but not like this. Even having read it before, this took a while to really digest reading it again. I think you capture that sickening uncertainty and the way we make peace with it, almost. It's a shame the world we live in is like this, but I think you write about it very well.

FLOORBOARDS 17 Feb 2023 05:05

Seconded. It’s not something we should have to make peace with — a fact we subconsciously accept — and that makes the peace we do make so elegiac. It’s a terrifying emotional space to imagine our own deaths.

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