** Warning ** If you’re reading this, I am so sorry.
This blog will not be perfect! It’ll be messy. I am honestly just typing out my train of thoughts as it comes to me, so please forgive me if it’s all over the place. Anyways, let’s get to it. For the past five weeks, I’ve been reading Columbine by Dave Cullen. It is a non-fiction book. As many of you guys know, it’s about the Columbine school shooting in 1999. If you’re not familiar with the incident, here’s an overall summary article about it. To be brief, it was a school shooting before it was even a “thing” in America. Two kids carefully planned out the massacre for about four years and finally carried it out. It’s considered to be the worst high school shooting in history consisting of 15 dead (including the two suicide of the shooters) and more than 25 injured. This massacre is one of the most discussed incidents in American history. Okay, so let me be honest with you guys. It’s a pretty lengthy book consisting of 389 pages. I’ve read about 210 pages so far so I would say I’m on the right track. So far, I’ve had no problem reading this book regarding comprehension. If I can read it, you can read it! But the reason it’s taking me some time (to finish the book) is the CONTENT. It’s my first time shifting away from fun fiction books to something so graphic and disturbing. It’s especially difficult during my “Independent Reading Time” in Mrs. Rooks’ class. It’s not quite easy reading about two school shooters who posed as an everyday student/teenagers while sitting in class with everyday students! The victims had absolutely no clue who they (actually) were, for four years of high school, until the massacre happened. Call me weird and paranoid but I keep peeking at my classmates… sorry y’all. It’s not exactly the most ideal place to read Columbine, so I mainly read it at home.
Columbine isn’t just about describing what happened in the shooting. It debunks common myths like “they were outcasts” or “they purposely targeted certain people”. You can find out what the truth is by reading the book. But more importantly, it focuses on relationships and the psychology behind the shooters as well as the victims. Dave Cullen goes in-depth and attempts to analyze why the shooters and the victims behaved the way they did in the massacre with new approaches on perspective and understanding. Take Robyn Anderson for example. She’s was a 4.0 GPA active church group girl who was Dylan Klebold’s date to prom (Dylan is one of the shooter). Everything seemed to be going great for her until the day of the shooting. Keep in mind that she was not killed or injured in the massacre. Something else happened that day. When descriptions of suspects in trench coats and double-barreled shotguns reached her ears, she realized her prom date was the murderer. Even more baffling was the fact that she was the one who supplied Dylan and Eric with the guns used in the shooting. Although it was unintentional, she had become a perpetrator. Instead of telling the investigation team of her recently acquired knowledge, she played it cool and pretended she had no clue about it when interrogated. You may be thinking “wow, she’s a horrible person”, but in my point of view it’s somewhat understandable. She was just a teenage girl who found out she had accidentally helped her prom date kill more than a dozen of her classmates. I don’t understand what she was thinking when she bought the guns for them but it was certainly not this. Cullen infers what Robyn must have felt by saying, “Robyn felt so guilty… How could she have imagined this?” (Cullen 90). Her actions show how fear can shape our behaviors. Besides the guilt of her actions, the fear of the consequences she was about to face silenced her. She had been a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and a good follower of Christ all her life. For her to suddenly become a perpetrator of America’s most devastating school shooting all because of a favor she did for a friend was SCARY. Although lying about what she did wasn’t right, she was obviously just thinking instinctively like any other one of us would have. If I were in that situation, I would be so overwhelmed with guilt and fear that I wouldn’t know what to do either! Most people focus on Dylan and Eric, but I thought it was interesting this book talked about other people who were involved, such as Robyn.
Not to be cliche or anything but this book had really been a wake up call for me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read this book but when I read couple pages in the beginning, I was “shook”. It was about Mr.DeAngelis, the Columbine coach/principal, giving a speech to the student body about how much he loves them. He was lecturing the kids about tragedies in life and how easy it is to lose someone. It was one of those classic speeches given by principals. But the reason this is noteworthy is because he made this speech just four days before the massacre. He probably had no idea how relevant his words meant at that time. The twisted timing of it all it is really heartbreaking. At the end of his speech, Mr. DeAngelis says,”I want to see each and every one of your bright, smiling faces again Monday morning” (Cullen 4). He goes on to say, “I love you, but remember, I want us all together” (Cullen 4). His speech was given on a Friday, and the following Tuesday, he lost 13 students. This made me realize that I should be appreciative and cherish every moment of my life. You never know what might happen tomorrow or the day after that. You bet the next time my parents tell me they love, I won’t give a passive empty reply! A more personal (kind of ridiculous) reason why this quote stood out for me is because I went to a Science NHS meeting a week ago and Mr. Finch (my school principal) gave a speech over tragedies that happens in life and how to “live your life to the fullest”…. THIS WAS SOMETHING THE PRINCIPAL AT COLUMBINE SAID. I was listening to my principal’s speech and I couldn’t even fathom what was happening. It was so bizarre that I actually had goosebumps at one point. What the heck! That connection just completely threw me off and to be honest, I was kind of scared. At the end, I decided to take it as a sign saying the universe really wants me to learn something.
Here is an article on why schools nowadays practice lockdown drills and what the purpose is. Even at Hebron High School, we practice this frequently. Although it’s not said in the article, it’s interesting to know that the Columbine shooting is the event that really started this whole practice.
Cullen, Dave. Columbine. 1st ed., New York: Twelve, 2009. Print.
History.com Staff. “Columbine High School shootings.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, history.com/topics/columbine-high-school- shootings. Accessed 27 Sept. 2017.
Kerr, Jennifer C. “Active-shooter drills help schools prepare for the worst.” Ap News, 31 May 2016, apnews.com/522a9640744f4385ad7a9bf44ff910dc. Accessed 27 Sept. 2017.
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