I still have Facebook, primarily to check my memories. Usually, it’s something funny that the kids said, or some family pictures. But today was different:

“Just left Columbiana in a stampede. Rumored shooting. Scary.”

We’d gone to Columbiana Mall near our house to do some shopping and stopped at the Red Robin near the exit to get some dinner before heading home. After dinner, we stepped out of the restaurant into a stampede of people running toward us. A woman yelled “Go! There was a shooting!” as she ran past. We darted back inside Red Robin and left through their exits. I had Norah and Jill, and we got briefly separated from Ryan and my wife, Liz as we left through different doors. We found each other, ran to the car and got the hell out of there as police and first responders poured into the parking lot from all directions.

That is one of Ryan’s earliest memories. Four years old. Being separated from his sisters. He actually brought it up the other day and commented that he still hates going to the mall.

Here’s the weird thing. The mall locked down, but a shooter was never found. In fact, there was no evidence of a shooting at all. Best guess was that there was a fight, and someone fired an Airsoft gun. It was enough to set off the panic and the stampede. And so there wasn’t a shooting, but there was a panic. (Sadly, in 2022, there actually was a shooting at the mall.)

So thanks for the memory, Facebook. That’s one I’d rather forget.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.