My Adventures and Places Life Takes Me: Columbine

As the 18th anniversary of 9/11 approached, I found myself watching YouTube videos and documentaries about the event, as I do every year, since it happened. They are always educational, interesting and sad. I still remember how strange that day began and how horrible it ended. I was less than a month into my senior year of high school while we were in the mist of this historic yet tragic event. Our world changed that day.

Anyway, as I was sifting through the videos I came across some of the Columbine videos and I instantly became hooked. I NEEDED to know more about it. I became obsessed. I am kinda embarrassed on how obsessed I became with it. It was nothing different from my past obsessions of learning about the Titanic, 9/11, JFK, Mt. St. Helens, true crime documentaries (ones mostly written by Anne Rule), biographies and other tragedies and biopics such as Into the Wild (the Chris McCandless story) and Wild (Cheryl Strayed). I enjoyed those books so much every time I went to a Goodwill or a second hand store and found a copy I bought it and gave them out as gifts.

I spent weeks watching Columbine documentaries on my computer, reading articles (past and present) and even found my library card to check out books. I haven't checked out books from the library since January 2017 when I obsessed over learning as much as I could about the Titanic. I got onto the library's online catalog and started looking up books to check out. I came across one called Columbine by Dave Cullen and I couldn't put the book down. I read it at break, I read it at lunch and I even read it when I got home from work.

The day of April 20, 1999, I was a freshman in high school going about our day as usual (I can't believe it's been 20 years). I had an ortho appointment at 8 so I missed most of first hour where we were playing basketball. During second hour we worked on the fur trade in Washington State while we filled out a matrix. Third hour I lifted free weights and then went to a class meeting. At this point we should have heard about the school shooting in Columbine but we didn't. After the meeting, I went to lunch with my friends in the commons at our table we always sit at and then went to my fourth hour class where we spent time working on our short stories. Fifth hour was spent working on chapter 9, sixth hour was spent naming yearbook photos on the computer and putting them into appropriate folders and finished up the day working on a lab in physical science. I went to track practice after school. We worked on our events that we were going to participate in which for me were the 100m, 200m and long jump. I was not a big fan of the 200m run.

Not once during the day did we know about the Columbine shootings. I don't even remember if the teachers said anything or that they knew but was keeping it to themselves. I think the first time I knew about it was when I got home and the news was on. You have to remember, we didn't have access to breaking news like we do now with smart phones and all. I actually didn't really know what was going on most of the time unless someone was talking about it or we saw it on Channel One the next school day.

When I did hear what happened, me and probably a bunch of other kids, thought nothing of it because it was happening in Colorado and not here in Rainier. I know, kid logic. I never felt unsafe at school even after Columbine. I was aware that several places were experiencing school shootings but I never thought Rainier would ever have one and we still never have. I heard that two high school students, who were troubled kids, bullied and assumed outcasts, got sick of everything, brought guns and bombs to the school and unloaded on the people inside. I heard that about 20 people were killed and many others were injured. That was pretty much the extent of it.

Throughout the years, I've heard bits about Columbine here and there but never really fully dove into it until now. What I got out of it was these two kids who killed people were mentally ill (among other things) and it manifested since they were little kids. They really hated how they were treated by the teachers and the administrators in school and by peers so they acted out. One was passive depressive and the other one was an aggressive narcissus and they both complimented each other perfectly. They started with petty crimes that soon fed to more complex crimes that involved guns, bombs and planning to kill everyone in their high school. They made video tapes, wrote in diaries, online blogs and even threatened people.

As the date got closer, they secured guns from older kids (they weren't old enough to purchase guns), made a bunch of bombs, kept secrets from their parents, friends and co-workers and tried to blend in without giving any information of "what was to come" away. One of them even went to Prom the weekend before. The boys had originally planned to do it on Monday but settled for Tuesday because they couldn't secure all their weapons in time. They made a few more videos in their basement and letters to their families telling them sorry.

On Tuesday, April 20th it was go time. They both got up really early, ate breakfast at a fast food place, secured all their gear and headed to the school. A few people noticed they weren't in their classes including Brooks Brown (a friend, then not a friend, then a friend), who thought it was odd that one of them was missing an exam during one of their morning classes. He decided to miss the next class and he ran into one of them in the parking lot. He wondered what he was up to and he simply stated, I like you now, go home. Brown thought it was weird but he started walking home. About halfway home, he heard shooting but thought nothing of it. Then he heard sirens and then it got serious. When he did get to a house, he called the authorities and told the police who he thought was doing the shootings. The boys had placed some propane bombs in bags inside the cafeteria which was located on the ground level just before everyone gathered there for lunch. It wasn't on the surveillance tapes when they checked later on. They stood outside in the parking lot and waited until they went off. Buuutt, there was a problem with the propane bombs...they didn't go off. If it would have went as planned, many of the kids and faculty would have died in the explosions or smothered to death by the second story of the school collapsing. They were angry and frustrated.

They took matters into their own hands and started walking towards the school with one thing in mind, shoot up people and cause as much damage as they could. Essentially to make people pay. A lot of the students that day thought it was a senior prank and thought nothing of it until people were bleeding or were dead. It was a game to the shooters. All hell broke loose inside the school once people realized what was going on. A lot of the kids in the cafeteria got out safely but it didn't work out for some of the people in the hallways and in the library. They shot up everywhere. Every wall, locker, glass cases had bullet holes riddled in them. It was a war scene. They started in the hallways and worked their way into the cafeteria to shoot the bombs and see if they would go off like they had hoped. It just started fires and burnt things. They got bored of that so they went up on the second level towards the library to wreak some more havoc.

There, they found a few dozen kids and some faculty members. Several of those kids were up there either studying, finishing homework or hanging out with their friends. They didn't know what was going on until it arrived. The teacher demanded that they get under their desks so all the kids got under their desks or at least they tried to find cover. The two boys came in and shot some of them, injured a bunch of them, taunted them and made fun of them. They let one of the kids go. They left the library to go downstairs to shoot up the propane bombs again. From the look of the surveillance tape, it seemed as if they got bored so they went back upstairs to the library. They terrorized the kids some more, had a shootout with the police from the windows. They knew they wouldn't make it out alive and they didn't want to go to jail so they committed suicide in one of the corners of the library. It was over. However, no one knew exactly how many shooters there were so they took a long time to set the perimeter and get inside to rescue the rest of the kids and faculty that were inside. In the meantime, a teacher bled to death in the science room and a kid who was badly injured climbed out the second story library window. This will be one of the most famous scenes of the Columbine Massacre.

All the surviving people eventually vacated the school while the dead stayed there overnight. The parents and community were angry, heartbroken and confused on how this would happen. The next day the investigation started and it went for years. The police were questioned on the way they handled the situation, parent's wanted closure and monetary compensation for the death of their children and everyone wanted answers. The parents of the two boys were harassed and didn't want to talk to anyone. One set of the boy's family members eventually started to do talks and TED talks on the subject of being a parent of a kid who killed students during a school shooting.

Everyone tried to make sense of what happened and we probably really never will because we are not the two boys who did the shooting. However, they did leave enough evidence behind to come to some sort of conclusion of what was going on. All of the chaos happened within an hour. It took an hour take the lives of innocent kids who didn't deserve it and it will take a lifetime for those who survived the terrible tragedy to learn how to live with it.

The media wasn't helpful while this was going on. No one seemed to know what was going on so they asked the kids fleeing the school and they really didn't know so bad information was bring spread. I heard all kinds of stuff throughout the week. Eventually, we heard what the order of events were that took place. It was harrowing.

As a result, 13 people died (students and faculty) and another 24 were injured. The library was remodeled, a memorial was built and "Columbine" became a byword for future mass shootings. I can't imagine being one of those students living with that fear everyday because it can happen anywhere and to anyone. Unfortunately, there have been more school shootings since then and no real answers on how to prevent them from happening.

I hope the next time I am in the Denver, Colorado area I am able to come visit the memorial.