[melancholy music]
- Dezmond Floyd (DF): What emergency drills
did you have as you were growing up in school?
- Tanai Benard (TB): Fire drills and tornado drills and that was it...
So can you tell me exactly what happens
in active shooter drills?
- DF: The teacher is supposed to lock the door,
turn the lights off, and push this big desk behind the door.
And the first time I did a active shooter drill I saw her
having a hard time with it so I decided to come help her
because if she doesn't get the desk on the door in time,
the intruder can open it.
- TB: So what do you do next after you push the table?
- DF: The class is supposed to stand on the back wall
but I decided to stand in front of the class,
because I want to take the bullet and save my friends.
- TB: So does your teacher ask you to stand
in front of the class?
- DF: No... My life matters but, it's kind of like,
there's one person that can come home to the family
or there can be 22 people that come home to a family.
- TB: Do you know why it's hard for me to accept that?
- DF: Because I'm such a young age,
I shouldn't really be giving my life up.
Like, you shouldn't have to worry about that.
- TB: Right...
If there's any a time that I want you to be selfish,
it's then.
I need you to come home.
So would you still stand in front of your friends
even with me telling you not to?
- DF: Yes... I get that you would want me to come home
but it's really not a choice that you can make.
It's a choice that I have to make.
- TB: I see now that there's nothing I could say
that would change your mind.
I just hope that it never comes to that.
- DF: Talking about this makes me feel sad,
but you raised a good person.
- TB: And this is why I can't have the conversation with you.
You keep saying things like that and I'm speechless.
You're 10.
And you're that 10 year old who doesn't clean their room and...
There is no handbook for this.
This is why the conversation
always ends between you and I in dead silence.
Because I'm a mother, and I don't know what to say.
[somber piano music]