How Did That Happen?

Eleven years ago, on April 20th, 1999, I was a regular 8th grader, going about my business as usual, hopping from class to class, half-daydreaming, half-present. I expected nothing from that day, as I expected nothing from any day at school. I was certainly not prepared for the announcement I would hear at my algebra class right before lunch. A news report had just been distributed to all the teachers at my school, a news report so dreadful it paralyzed my otherwise perfectly-in-control-math-geek teacher. She stood before our class, not knowing how to deliver the news. We, even at 13, instinctively knew something was wrong. We sat in silence and waited. Finally, she started saying, "It seems like there was a mass..." and her voice started breaking. She took a deep breath and then started again, "There was a massacre at a high school in Colorado today. It looks like some students got some guns and... " Her voice trailed off again as her eyes got watery. The class was stunned into silence. We sat there and said nothing for a while. Then we started asking questions. We wanted to know everything. And once all the facts were given to us, we sat in silence again.

We were silent for days.

For some reason, it hit me really hard. I watched and read every news coverage on the story. The images and stories imprinted themselves in my heart. I had no connection to any of those kids or to that high school in Littleton, Colorado- I had never even been to Colorado- but I was deeply disturbed and forever changed by that tragedy. I searched- I am still searching- for the answer to the most-asked question, "How did that happen?" How did those young boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, with their whole lives ahead of them, get to the point of such despair that they decided to buy guns, walk into school with them one day, and shoot their classmates, then themselves. Twelve students and one teacher were killed, and many were injured permanently. I wanted to know who they were, I wanted to know how they had been raised, I wanted to know more about the culture they had grown up in and what their high-school experiences had been like. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to understand.

I sought to understand what I, or anyone else, could never really understand. But there was something about them that I did understand, and that I would grow to understand even more deeply as I had my own high-school experiences. I had good parents, I had a great relationship with my brother, I had friends, I went to a high school that provided counseling and support, and I had my love for theatre to get me through any rough teenage times. But I also understood what it was like to feel like you did not belong. I knew what it was like to know you would never be the most popular person in your high-school, not even close, and to have to pretend, every day, that you didn't care. I had friends, close good dear friends, but I knew what it was like to secretly wish I had more friends, which would mean that more people liked me. I knew what it was like to feel invisible, at home and at school, and to never feel like what was important to me was important to anyone in charge. I knew what it was like to be terribly, dreadfully, unbearably lonely. And I could imagine magnifying those circumstances: never feeling like I could talk to my own parents, living in a town where nothing ever happened, where maybe I wasn't even invited to uneventful basement parties, going to a school where there were no subjects that interested me in any capacity, having only one friend- and I'm sure the list could go on. And although I can't understand the boys murdering their classmates and then killing themselves, I can start to understand their need for a violent gesture, their need to be seen, and their deep, desperate need to get out of their lives.

I am still obsessed with the Columbine shootings. I can't even write about it right now without shaking. I can't do much about it, I can't even do much about understanding it and answering the question "How did that happen?". But I can remember it. And I do. Eleven years have gone by and most people don't think about it anymore. April 20th comes and goes. Columbine high-school was closed today, and a few articles were written. Some students there still think about it, still wonder, still go to school with ghosts. And the families of the murdered teenagers still remember this day when they lost a piece of themselves. I can't imagine what Eric and Dylan's parents do on this day, what they do with their lives, how they have managed to get on.

And I, who never had any connection to anyone at Columbine, spend my day thinking about it. Not only thinking about the tragedy and mourning the losses, but also still wondering what propelled it. Wondering who Eric and Dylan really were. Wondering if it really could have been prevented by simply making guns less available, or some other explanation that was thrown at us by the media. Wondering who's to blame. Wondering if we've learned from it. And lastly, wondering, perhaps forever and to no avail, how it happened.

April 20th, 2010. Columbine, your victims are remembered.

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