Today at noon, my school took part in a country-wide 'emergency drill' and the cultural disparities between my first country and my second one were readily apparent from the name alone. As an American, I would call the very term 'emergency drill' a euphemism, a slightly more oblique, neutered way of referring to a rocket attack. The Israelis around me counseled me that this was certainly not the case, and in fact was merely the product of typical Israeli pragmatism and utilitarianism. 'Emergency drill' covered all the bases in the most concise way--katyushka rocket attack, mortar barrage, kalashnikov fire, dirty bomb, kornetkophet anti-tank guns, etc, etc, and so forth. (Considering the three k's above, maybe the vitriol directed at recent Russian immigrants in Israel is triggered less by the psychological "fear of the other" than by the visceral "fear of scary weapons."
These drills are held several times a year, and as mentioned earlier in this blog, are further supplemented by classroom instruction in emergency safety. I do not envy the textbook designer first tasked with creating an elementary school workbook taking students through the basics of protection against artillery, aerial, and chemical attacks, but it has been done. For those of you imagining the worse, I can reassure you, it is the epitome of restraint, no
unsuspecting Smurfs being air-strafed or anything like that, and a very tasteful use of color-by-numbers and connect-the-dots.
At the sound of the air-raid siren that marks the beginning of a school drill, the whole student body heads to one of two cavernous emergency rooms--which, from my callow American perspective, strongly resemble underground bomb shelters. That is, bomb shelters with a practice barre and parquet dance flooring in one corner of the room, piled-up gymnastics mats serving as improvised benches, a fleet of push-pedal cars hanging from hooks on the ceiling, and a passel of rusty music stands clustered underneath a pull-up bar and a yellowed poster announcing in Hebrew that, "Champions Never Quit!"
Representatives from the upper grades--4, 5, and 6--wear neon-yellow safety vests with 'warden' printed on them and are responsible for aiding their classmates, the younger students, and the staff. Some direct traffic, others collect class lists from teachers, and six are responsible for carrying navy blue backpacks full of first aid supplies into their designated
bomb shelter emergency rooms. These are vaunted roles usually accorded to the responsible student-council types--no booger eaters or nose bleeders among them, which does instill a certain amount of confidence. Once everyone has made their way downstairs (or underground, in the case of the fifth and second grade students who fill the outdoor classrooms separated from the main building) the kids sit in groups under a sign with their grade and classroom number printed in Comic Sans. The teachers each do a headcount, and then a second one, before we commence to waiting for the all-clear signal.
The first-graders look a little wide-eyed and converge around their homeroom teachers like ducklings, but all the older kids quickly pull out books, cards, and board games. Three or four minutes is all it takes for the volume in the room to reach shreeking levels. The teachers are marooned in a sea of chattering kids. Sixth grade boys cluster excitedly around a heated game of
Taki, while third-grade girls french-braid each others' hair and color with fruit-scented markers. Mixed in among the tangle of conversations, I can hear the latest iteration of an ongoing argument between a trio of fourth-graders (who definitely have eight-sided dice in their future) about the enemies Ninjas can (and cannot) destroy. From what I can pick up of the Hebrew, pirates and orcs are no longer under dispute but dinosaurs and zombies remain highly contentious. It's sunny outside now, but the morning thunderstorms just let up, and the aroma of wet and muddy clothing mixed with the incipient funk wafting over from the 6th grade boys newly arrived in the akward N.U.D.N.U. period (Needing Underarm Deodorant but Not Using it yet) is a heady and complex bouquet. You'd think the thick cinderblock walls would dampen some of the noise, but it just keeps rising.
Ten minutes in, and one of the fourth-grade English teachers is plugging both her ears and doing deep-breathing exercises, some of the college students here to observe for their university education courses are gazing longingly at the staircase, and the inclusion aide for the autistic boy in grade three has started rocking and flapping too.
I flash a rueful lopsided smile at Alfa, a curly-haired blonde who teaches first grade and who I can say with firsthand authority possesses the sang-froid and poise necessary to comb modeling clay out of someone's pigtail while teaching 34 other six year olds the two-times table and balancing on a pilates exercise ball (the last part is by choice, not school policy). Just as I'm thinking, "I bet none of this fazes her in the least," she leans over conspiratorially and whispers in my ear, "Right now? I'll take the rockets."
Roi, one of my British-born students catches my eye and shouts over the din, but I can't hear a word of what he's saying. I motion him over with an outstretched arm, and lean down for his question: D'you hahve these exercises in American schools as well, then?" "Well, not for. . . emergencies but, yeah, in the part of the country where I'm from, we have drills where we practice what to do if a tornado comes, and in junior high we would go down to the school's boiler room. . .which is a room sort of like this," I motion with a tilt of my head. "Tornadoes?" he asks while twirling a finger questioningly. "Yeah, you know, like, the beginning of
Wizard of Oz." He nods appreciatively, so I go on. "Illinois is on the edge of a part of the country called "Tornado Alley," because there are so many of them." Roi's eyes light up at the imagined mayhem, so I even add, "Sometimes television shows and radio programs are interrupted by tornado alerts and tornado warnings, and towns have tornado sirens they set off when a funnel cloud is coming." " Woah!," he says, his yes widening, and then I lose the second half of the sentence. "What'ja say, buddy?" He cups both hands around his mouth and this ten-year old, who had to demonstrate for a nineteen year old IDF soldier that he knew how to put on and adjust a gas mask in September, bellows into my ear, "I'm rahly, rahly glad we don't have those here!"
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