What happened in Drexel Hill yesterday afternoon was just a drill.
What happened in Boston was not.
It's more than a little ironic that while the Delaware County District Attorney was presenting the annual Safe Schools Summit to more than 400 people at the Drexelbook, including a demonstration of a reaction by law enforcement to a live shooter, an all-too-real horror was playing out on the streets of Boston.
It seems odd that the Safe Schools Summit already seems to have become routine - at least right up until around 2:50 yesterday afternoon.
I admit that one of the reasons I was more interested this year was because D.A. Jack Whelan was including an exercise to demonstrate how law enforcement would react to a live shooter inside a school. After all, it's only been a few months since our national psyche was mortally wounded by the twisted mind of a madman who invaded an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Conn. You can read the story on the Safe School Summit here.
Not long after the "exercise" concluded, reality set in again.
Two bomb blasts rocked the finish line of the fabled Boston Marathon. The toll now stands at 3 dead and more than 130 wounded.
We again were reminded that terror can strike anywhere, anytime.
And as usual it targets the innocent, regardless of whether they are kids supposedly tucked safely inside a New England school, or runners and fans celebrating one of the truly great days in American sport.
Yes, it was Patriots Day in Boston.
In the days, weeks and months to come, patriotism will be everywhere. That's a good thing. A big part of patriotism these days is the realization that terror can and will strike us at any time. Events like the Safe Schools Summit keep us safe, prepared - or at least as prepared as you can be - for what once was unthinkable.
That's one of the ugly backdrops to these grisly stories. The unthinkable is now becoming routine.
What was once only a drill is now all too real.
Sometimes in the same day.
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