I pick Mason up from school every day around 3:30pm. Susan and Morgan don’t get home until around 6pm, so for two and a half hours, it’s just me and the boy. I treasure that time we spend together and the conversations we have. The first thing I always ask him about when he gets in the truck is how his day went.

“It was good,” he said yesterday. “I had mashed potatoes and chicken meat for lunch. RyRy (Ryan, one of his friends) and I made up a new game. And we missed snacktime and recess because we were on lockdown.”

Lockdown? Is that some sort of thing teacher-imposed punishment when the kids are bad or something? I wish. Lockdown is when the school gets shut down for security reasons. Doors are locked, lights are turned off, shades are drawn, and the children are huddled together in the back of their classroom until the all-clear signal is given.

I quizzed Mason about the lockdown but he had few specific answers. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t a drill — which apparently, they practice as often as we used to do fire and tornado drills. It’s hard getting detailed answers from a six-year-old sometimes.

After school I took Mason for a haircut, and when we got home there was a message on the answering machine from Mason’s principal. Around 3pm, Yukon Police were chasing a suspect on foot and the chase ended up on school property. The lockdown was real, and lasted about twenty minutes.

I’m not sure what bothered me more — the fact that my kid’s school was locked down for 20 minutes, or how nonchalant he was about the whole incident.