Linville McDonough of Norridgewock is a student at the University of Maine Farmington, majoring in political science and minoring in creative writing.

Growing up, you realize your favorite days from middle school — the ones when you left the school in the morning, walked to a public building a few blocks away and sat on the floor in a large room with all your peers — were days when your school had a bomb threat.

My school had a bomb threat, but I was just playing a clapping game with Aiden and Elliot. I got to gossip about the stupid thing the guy who was running for president said. I complained about not being able to take the Chromebooks home when the older kids got to. I was blessed to be oblivious.

But now I know that the teachers in that room were stressed. They were waiting for news of whether a bomb had been found, gone off, or if it had just been another empty threat like earlier in the year. They were under pressure from the administration to keep over 60 kids safe, and they felt the weight of the parents at work, who were checking their phones repeatedly. Now, most parents experience that panicked haze, as they wait to see if their 11-year-old is safe.

And it wasn’t only bomb threats that I was raised on. Firearms are the leading cause of death in childhood, a horrifying trivia fact that every parent and teacher knows, and by eighth grade, it was just my reality.

It just was. We did lockdown drills in second grade. The principal would come over the loudspeaker and tell us that we were now in a lockdown. We’d all go to the corner of the classroom, hiding out of sight from the window on the door. We’d all curl up in a ball, and if you were lucky, you got to be the special one to turn out the lights.

I didn’t know that my teacher was probably seeing pictures from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in her head. She did a mental count of her second graders, just for peace of mind. Nothing was happening, but she knew it easily could. And it would be her body between us and the gun. That’s what was expected of her.

In 2007, my local preschool started practicing lockdown drills. Ms. Lindsey, preschool teacher and certified child whisperer, can only laugh as she tells me about practicing the drills with toddlers. The principal came in, lecturing her that they were being too loud. All she said was, “Sir, they’re 3. They aren’t going to stay still. The best I can do is read a quiet book.”

She knew that the drills wouldn’t protect them. It was a placating plan created for a fragile peace of mind. The only Band-Aid helpless schools could provide.

I’ve seen the videos made for kids in the 1950s, “Duck and Cover,” starring a goofy turtle. The video shows kids who are good and obedient hiding under their desks so well. The scary Soviets are after you, but here’s how you can stay safe. It was a lie, though, just like the lockdown drills. No classroom desk was going to protect a child from a nuclear attack. But it was the only reassurance the government gave the parents.

When I was in high school, studies came out showing that hiding in a corner in a dark classroom was not going to keep children safe from someone determined to kill them. That reassurance ended, too. A.L.I.C.E. drills were invented in my district. It stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. The principal via loudspeaker would tell you where the shooter was in the building, and the teacher would use that knowledge to evacuate or shelter in place.

Getting older always comes with a new perspective. My college, UMF, is known for producing teachers. The students are amazing. A friend talks about the dress-up day in her class, where she’s student teaching. “The kids are so cute and creative with their costumes,” she says, grinning. Another friend jokes about how the fifth graders don’t understand slang yet, and how one child said to another student, “‘You’re such a yappuccino!’ I barely know what that means, and I’m sure he doesn’t at all,” she laughs.

As a political science major, my days are filled with what is truly reflection on the past to the present. In discussions with my best friend, a soon-to-be teacher, school shootings came up, and she told me, “I started voting only when I realized that I would be in danger with the wrong policies. I didn’t think I had enough information to vote before, but now I realize I need to.”

This was and is our lives. Please don’t make this tomorrow’s normal.