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Do you remember the fire drills? The bells would ring, and we had to practice evacuating the school, in a neat orderly group...now when I was in 8th grade, we did not have to go to the regular exits with the rest of the school, because we had a fire escape off a door in our classroom, which was on the third floor...so we got to go down the fire escape....we sure did like that...

However, the boys liked it too much...why? because when those fire bells rang, the boys all ran to be first in line going down the fire escape....they wanted to be first in line, because that way they could get down the fire escape quickly, and then look up the girls dresses as we were coming down...and then when the all clear bells rang, ,they wanted the girls to be in line first, so going back up the fire escape, the girls would be first, and the boys would be on the ground or the lower part of the fire escape, ,and could then look up our dresses again....in that time, girls always had to wear dresses....we never considered trying to wear shorts or pants...dresses and skirts were required...

Now in Chicago, its a custom, tho I dont know if it still continues today, but in my childhood days, and even after I was married and had kids, there was always something that happened every single Tuesday, at 10:30am....the air raid sirens would go off....it was like, once a week, all places that had air raid sirens, needed to turn them on, to test them...and on TV, at that same time, all the stations went to the EBS(Emergency Broadcast System), for one minute, whereby they told us, in case of emergencies of statewide, or local, or even federal importance, this is how it would look on our TV screens...

So every Tuesday at 10:30, the air raid sirens went off...dogs howled, people new to the area, who were unfamiliar with the practice, panicked, and at least at our school, we were required to jump under our desks, and prepare ourselves for attack...it was all too funny, remembering how we were all crouched under our desks, anticipating being bombed by the Russians(For it was no doubt the Russians we were mean enough to bomb us)...

While we were hiding under our desks, the boys would be spitting spit balls, or scratching where it was impolite to scratch while seated at your desk, and the girls would be whispering and acting silly...

But we did know, at the sirens blast, to drop and get under that desk...kind of like a Pavlovian response....to this day, when I hear sirens, the urge to drop under a desk or a chair, is still with me...