The name Columbine High School will forever bring to mind images of fear. I was on vacation in Florida, enjoying the wonderful sights and sounds of Walt Disney World, on that horrible day. I had gone back to my hotel in the middle of the day for a brief rest, and turned on the TV, only to find myself riveted to CNN, much as I had been after the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, during much of the Gulf War, and after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. My heart went out to those frightened parents, waiting to see if thier children were alive or dead, and to the children themselves, huddling in silence in the darkened school building, fearing that every sound they heard was the gunmen, coming to kill them. I watched as the children exited the building in small groups, and as a few of them were interviewed, and I listened to what they were saying.
That's an interesting choice of words... "I listened to what they were saying." How many people really listened to what those poor frightened kids said after they were freed from the school? Most people probably think they were listening, but think again. For days after the shootings, people all over the country went on the air asking "Why? Why did these kids do something so horrible?" If you were really listening, you'd have the clues to tell you why, but only a few of us recognize thoses clues and put them together in our heads.
The 'Trenchcoat Mafia.' A rather strange name, but then there are alot of strange names in high school. All the kids who spoke to reporters about the shooters refered to them in similar terms; they were a strange group of isolated kids who seemed to want to be different than everybody else. But every description of these kids contained one word that said more to me than any other hundred words: outcast. "They were outcasts," the victims all said. Not loners, not hermits, not isolationists; outcasts. Not people who isolated themselves from society willingly, but those who were cast out: outcasts. After watching the horror show on my hotel TV for an hour, I knew these kids as if I had spent my life with them. I knew them, because I was one of them.
When I went to high school in the mid-1980's, shooting sprees like the one at Columbine High were unknown. But other things were just the same; after all, some things never change. In high school, we are all bombarded with noise, both from the outside, in parents, teachers, and other students talking to us instead of with us, and from the inside, as our minds struggle to adjust not only with our changing bodies, but our changing lives as well. The term 'raging hormones' is an overused cliche, usually refering to the overactive sex drive of a teenager. But we must remember that those hormones that flood our bloodstreams in those years affect every aspect of our behavior. Even without drugs, teens often behave irrationally, or even violently, but what could push a teen so far into the abyss of his own personal hell that he would plan and conduct a terrorist raid on his own high school? Fear. Embarrassment. Resentment. And outright hatred.
Teens are some of the cruelest, most sadistic people on the planet. They torment each other every day, and take delight in the pain they cause others. Most of us grow out of this phase quickly; a few delve deeper into it as if it were a narcotic. And getting a fix gets harder and harder as thier targets get thicker skins and more mature attitudes. But there are a few kids out there whose maturity didn't come as quickly, and whose skins didn't thicken. These sensitive, sometimes emotionaly handicaped kids are like a goldmine to those who enjoy inflicting pain. They are targets; they are human flies begging to have wings pulled off, human ants begging for a magnifying glass. They are human beings, but the pain-givers don't see them that way; to the pain givers, the sensitive kids are just a fix for thier sadism.
The sensitive kids come in a variety of types. There are the artists, the creative types who write poetry or music; there are the dreamers, the ones who immerse themselves in fantasy worlds like Star Trek, D&D, and Magic:The Gathering; and there are the geeks, those who don't seem to understand anything at all about human nature or relationships, but who have a great rappor with machines and electronics. Each of these people are so far outside the accepted standards for what passes as 'normal' in high school that they are avoided, shunned, and even ostricised from the rest of thier generation; and they know they have little in common with the rest, so they assist in isolating themselves. Peaceful coexistence works in high school pretty much the way it worked between the US and the USSR. But even in thier isolationism, these oddball kids still have each other. They band together with those who have common interests and common problems, and create thier own sense of belonging that goes a long way toward easing the pain caused by the pain-givers.
I, as you must have guessed by know, was one of the sensitive types. I was a dreamer; I immersed myself in the worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars, seeking escape from the pain that is part of every teens life and from the fear that every teen carries. Fear of what? In my case, of everything. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, or doing the wrong thing, or wearing the wrong thing; I was afraid of any breach of behavior that might give the pain-givers a chance to pounce on me. And when they did so, I felt the resentment, anger, and hatred that all teens feel when pain is intentionally inflicted on them. And it was worse than normal for me. You see, I did not even fit in with the outcasts. The artists, the dreamers, and the geeks all tried to make me feel welcome; being sensitive, they knew I was in pain, and wanted to help alleviate it. But I was as far different from those kids as they were to the masses. I can't pinpoint what made me so different; I simply was. And so I was alone; not just cast out from the mass of teen society, but self-isolated even from thoses who accepted me. And I felt so much pain, and rage at the pain I felt, that I could not confine it to the pain-givers. I hated almost everybody. You see, if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem. All teens insult each other; they play the verbal cut-down game constantly, usually without any real malice. But when you're a sensitive type, the assaults on your psyce all seem to hit with the same force. Some days it seemed that I couldn't go five minutes without someone cutting into my self-esteem with a verbal knife. On a few occasions, I was even beaten up. I was a walking target, and I was miserable. I hated my own life so much that I even considered ending it myself. And there were many occaisions on which I fantasized about beating the living crap out of some of the more adept pain-givers; but I considered all the kids, except those who went out of thier way to be nice to me, to be my mortal enemies.
Something in my life prevented me from thinking about taking serious action against these kids. My father is a police officer. I knew how to get to his gun and ammunition. Had I chosen to do so, I could have killed 10 or 12 people with it before the police subdued me. But the thought of this never entered my mind. Maybe it was the absolute rule I grew up with: NEVER touch dad's gun (he kept it locked up, anyway, but by the time I was 13 I knew where the keys were and probably could have gotten to it if I really wanted to). Maybe it was the Catholic upbringing. Or maybe it was the very sensitivity which caused me so much pain: I was too sensitive to the pain of others to inflict it. But I think the greatest thing was simply that my mind was not broken so badly that I could actually take a life. That's the key ingredient, you see. Many kids feel the same things I felt; some take thier own lives out of a desparate wish for the suffering to be over, but very few pick up weapons and try to kill those they feel responsible for thier pain. I think only those with the most broken, most disturbed minds could ever do such a thing. The pain inflicted on them by others is just a catalyst; the real fuel for such an undertaking is simple insanity.
I can't offer any solace to the kids at Columbine High school for the trauma the've undergone. And I can't offer any words that will ease the grief of those who lost a friend, a brother, a daughter or son. But maybe I can offer just a little in the way of an explanation for these events. There were two causes:
1) Plain and simple, the shooters were mentally disturbed. Thier minds were broken. They were insane. No sane person could ever do such horrible things.
2) These kids had chips on thier shoulders. They were outcasts, and were treated like dirt and worse whenever they showed up to school. This happens to lots of kids; most get through it alright. Some commit suicide. And a very few lash out violently at the world they think hates them.
We must all bear some responsibility for what happened at Columbine High, and the dozen similar incidents which have occured in recent years. It is not a society problem, it is an individual problem. We treat everyone badly, and those few with true mental illnesses are pushed over the edge. The next time you feel like insulting someone, bite it back. Think about their feelings, at least. And if that's not enough to make you forget the insult, think of your intended victim and try to imagine if he or she has any history of mental illness. Your insult may end up lighting a very short fuse on a very large powderkeg.