Columbine Book Project

Introduction

Looking back on the events of April 20, 1999, it still feels as though it was a horrible fever dream. Honestly, it didn’t feel real then and it still doesn’t. Partly, I think this is due to my relative distance from the people who most horribly affected. While I was a student at Columbine at the time, I was not close with anyone who died. I was not trapped for hours in the school. I had never even heard the names Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold until later that day on the news. Even as it happened I think I felt a certain separation from many other people, including my closest friends.

Observers of the event, both external and internal, have always been quick to tell us that we went through this experience jointly, and survived it jointly. While this is accurate, it is often overlooked that we also each went through completely different and separate personal experiences. I have never felt like a “survivor of Columbine.” I have always felt more like a witness. I think that this has been good for me. I have never felt reservations about speaking candidly of my experience. I have told my story countless times to countless people, many of them relative strangers. This is how I deal with it in my own way. And it works for me. However, I know many more people who have never spoken of it in full. Nine years later the weight is still too much to bear.

It’s important to remember that we were children when this happened. I didn’t think so at the time, but looking back, we were. We are from Littleton, Colorado. Littleton is a perfect example of a stereotypical American suburban town. Low violent crime, very middle class, very little poverty. In many ways this is a wonderful way to grow up. You don’t have to worry about someone walking down your street with a bomb on their chest; you don’t have to worry about a foreign government dropping a bomb into your bedroom while you do your homework. However, on the flip side, we were very sheltered. We were not prepared to deal with an event of this magnitude. Our families were not prepared, the school, the police the local government; none of us were prepared for this in any way. Most certainly, the community was not prepared for a disaster of this level to strike their children.

Since April 1999, Columbine has been analyzed, examined and torn apart in every way imaginable. Music, books, film, college courses and many other outlets have struggled for nine years to understand why two students walked into our school and killed thirteen people and then themselves. None of them has ever found an answer, and never will. You can’t give reason to a tragedy like this shooting. It happened because it is human nature. People will always kill each other. The answer is as clichéd and simple as that. What is important is to turn death into a learning experience. Not why did this happen, or why did God allow this to happen, but what can we learn from this that will make us better people? Unfortunately, I think that this idea gets lost in the shuffle of attempting to find understanding and explanation.

Columbine was an event that created a lot of shuffle. It turned into a media event of unimaginable proportion. Hundreds, probably thousands of reporters invaded Littleton in the aftermath. They came from nearly every continent, speaking countless languages. If any part of the shooting truly traumatized me, it was the ensuing days. Grieving privately with friends was nearly impossible to do. The media invaded every inch of our lives for weeks. And not only the media, but individuals and groups who were trying to help. I truly appreciate the outpouring of support we received, but I would gladly send back a million beanie babies and Six Flags passes for one day of peace and quiet to grieve with my friends. I am not attempting to lay blame on the media, and certainly not upon those who came to help us, and in many cases did. They were doing their jobs or what they felt was best and needed.

But in the mad rush to publicize the shooting, the feelings, thoughts and lessons that could have been taught and learned were largely lost. And, unfortunately many of them remain lost. However, now with nine years separating us from the event that will forever have Columbine students identified with this event, I think it is time to try to collect some of the wisdom and lessons that people have learned from this. In many ways, Columbine is the Kennedy assassination of my generation. Everyone I know remembers where they were and what they were doing on April 20, 1999. All I have to do, even on the far side of the world, is say the name “Columbine” and ninety percent of the time the look on the face of the person across from me will change. It is almost impossible to describe the surreal feeling of seeing a cinema marquee with “Bowling for Columbine” in gigantic letters or coming across a reference to Columbine in a college textbook.

Everyone has an experience tied to this day. Everyone has their own feelings and opinions that I feel need to be shared. We need to take something positive away from this tragic event. Many people already have. But I feel that, at least for me, the lessons have not been learned at large. The motto thrown around on this day was Never Forget. But we have forgotten. We have forgotten that the people who were affected by this were affected by it in very individual and personal ways, and not only as an entire community. The burning question, in my mind, is what has the community, the nation and the world learned from Columbine and similar tragedies? What positive experiences and lessons have been gained from these awful events? If we learn nothing positive then what was the point of survival?