By Carter M.

It’s a Friday like any other. February 11, 2022 to be exact. A quiet night in Richmond, Va. At about 9:30 pm, a fire alarm goes off at a school situated right in the middle of the Museum District and the Fan. Firefighters arrive at this school, William Fox Elementary, or more commonly known as “Fox.” They arrive, but see no problem with the school. It’s old, built more than one hundred years ago. The fire alarms are outdated and the detecting systems are finicky. They leave thinking everything is fine, probably just a false alarm. Though just an hour later, the firefighters are called again. This time flames are visible and raging.

I was in third grade when Fox Elementary burnt down, just back from Covid-related virtual school. Yet little known to everyone including myself, we would only be back in that building for a few months. I was young, turning nine that year, and naive too. I had learned about atrocities happening, watched movies and read history books about terrible things like the black plague. I may have seen the news of a distant war, or heard about a terrible disaster that happened on the other side of the country. Yet it was all far away, not connected to my life. I thought that nothing could go wrong for me, or to anyone I knew. It just didn’t happen. That peaceful night in Richmond, turned not-so-peaceful, showed me that terrible atrocities can and do happen. Not just far-away and in movies. They can hit close to home. About three blocks from home.

The firefighters fought the flames for hours, finally putting them out in the early morning, at about 3:00 am. The school was entirely burnt, with only the outside brick walls surviving. It would take RPS months to start rebuilding, and almost three more years for it to finally open its doors for new students. I would never return to the building as a student there, for its first year opening was my first year in middle school. Though this experience, still terrible, did help me learn something about life and about the world, and changed how I view both. 

On weekdays and every-other weekend I lived with my mom in the Fan, just three blocks away from Fox. On the rest of the weekends I lived with my dad, in downtown Richmond. I had been staying at my dad’s place when Fox burnt down, and I still to this day remember that night like it was yesterday. I had been woken up late at night by my dad, who had been watching the news. He told me my school was in flames. I thought it was just a little fire. I believed that it wasn’t that bad. I thought schools being burned down just happened in the news. I didn’t think there was even a possibility of my school burning down. If I had been at my mom’s house, right near Fox, I would’ve realized how extreme the fire was. The school, located right in the middle of the Fan, and just across the street from multiple houses, had worried people. The school engulfed in flames, just across the street from their houses. It could reach their houses any second. If it wasn’t for the firefighters’ fast action, the fire could have spread throughout homes in the Fan. My mom told me about people living close to Fox, my classmates, leaving in the middle of the night because they were worried about their houses being burned. I would have seen this all. 

The following morning I saw it on the news. I couldn’t believe it. I thought tragedies just happened to fictional characters from a story, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, not real people. Yet I did know tragedies happened, I just thought they could never happen to me. I was just innocent and naive. I had only been in the world for eight years, and nothing too terrible had happened in my life yet. Even the pandemic didn’t really affect me. No one I knew died of Covid-19, and I was just happy to be at home. Life had seemed so perfect, and why should that change? Yet that peaceful Friday night in Richmond, turned not-so-peaceful, changed my view of the world. Of life in general. And as I would come to learn more and more as I grew older, that life isn’t perfect, far from it.

After the fire, me and the other students would go from months of virtual school to months at a church to the rest of grade school at an unused school. The rest of my years at Fox, well, with Fox were not the best. There would be other tragedies in my years after that fateful night. When I was younger and more naive, before the fire, I thought that tragedies would make me view the world as a worse place. Though now I find that it’s the opposite. I now have more respect for the world. I’m more thankful for what I have. When I was younger and naive and thought that life was perfect. I wasn’t thankful because I thought I’d always have everything. A school, a house, people who love me. Why wouldn’t I have those things? Though I still have those same things, I think about them differently. Not just as the basics, but as great and wondrous things. Millions are homeless, don’t have education, and are not loved by someone. Now I know it can all go away in just one night. That’s why I’m more thankful, because I’m less naive. I know more.

That peaceful Friday night in Richmond, turned not-so-peaceful, changed me a lot. I saw an imperfect world where I had seen a perfect one. I had been naive, but then I wasn’t. I was thankful for things I previously hadn’t been thankful for. Years after the fire, William Fox Elementary would finally open its doors again. I would not be there. I was starting middle school. My experience at that middle school would be devoid of any fires and a much more enjoyable experience. Though even so, that fire, while still terrible, helped me learn something about life and this imperfect world that we live in, and also changed how I view both of them, too, for the better.