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Posted: Apr 21 2009 12:58 am

So this was sort of those "Where were you moments" like JFK's assassination, the towers falling, etc. So what do you remember what things were like for you 10 years ago when the Columbine Incident occured?

I remember the day after it happenned that we stopped the usual lesson plan in my American History class (I was in 11th grade at the time) and just had a freeform discussion about everything.

Back then I used to wear a green army coat (one of the few distinguishing things about me in school, I'd worn it pretty much every day it was bearable since 7th grade) and they called me into the counselor's office. Apparently my Spanish teacher was disturbed by the pretty banal vampire crap I had for a webpage back then and thought I was a threat (I showed it to her while I was killing time for my ride home since I had to stay after school to make up a test). Nothing really happenned and they realized I was just fine.

After Columbine, it seemed like the staff was on edge for any "deviation" like having blue hair or wearing a cape (yes an actual cape) to classes. I also remember several weeks where student attendance waned on Fridays and bomb threats were pretty common (and good for pissing off one of the 3 lunch schedules, if not more). I'm glad I got out of the school system before it got bad enough to install metal detectors and such.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 01:11 am

It was my senior year in high school. I was walking around the school for some reason and a classmate of mine come up to me and asked if I heard what happened. I said no and he told me about the shootings.

Our school's staff was on edge as well since my high school is in Colorado. They didn't want people wearing trench coats/army coats, gothic style clothing and so on. Some students had a petition to allow them to wear those clothes though. I'm not sure what ever came of the petition though. I didn't really agree with the clothing choice but I signed the petition because they have the right to wear what they want. Besides they were all fine. I had known many of them for years.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 01:19 am

I was 10 years old, and being babysat by my aunt (now that I think about it, why wasn't I at school? haha) and I just remember sitting there watching tv and having no fucking clue what was going on.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 06:10 am

Ross Rifle wrote:

I was 10 years old, and being babysat by my aunt (now that I think about it, why wasn't I at school? haha) and I just remember sitting there watching tv and having no fucking clue what was going on.

for some reason I always thought you were around 30 years old, I don't know why lol

I remember I was in HS when it happened. I also remember the the principle having the goth kids not wear their leather trenchcoats to school because everyone was spooked by the incident for about 2 or 3 days.

I think people would be lying if they said they had never thought about wanting to shoot some douchbags who picked on you at school for even a split second. The stupid thing about Colombine is that the two tools ended up killing kids who were actually nice to them and innocent. If I were them I would have just hired some Italians to break the legs of the dudes who were making their lives hell at school in some back alley.

They handled the situation wrong, bottom line.

Joined: Dec 06 2007 Location: Connecticut Posts: 11244

I don't recall everything clearly that day.

I feel like I was at school but my wife wasn't because it was her birthday. I think after the news was spread someone pulled the fire alarm and the administration just called school for the day. I drove to my wife's home and she had no idea what was going on. Made for a shitty birthday.

Oh, she wasn't my wife at the time. We had been dating for about 6 months.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 02:47 pm

Fuckers took my idea!

I was also pretty much shit on because i wore all black.. and wore a black duster 2 school...
No one really cared to think.. oh maybe we should be nicer to him.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 02:56 pm

Well, 9/11 was obviously a much bigger memory for me, but...

I was in high school, and I remember all my classes stopping to discuss that instead of the daily lesson. The biggest impression it left was on my theatre class though. We were doing West Side Story, and we ended up having to change the ending slightly. Instead of Tony getting shot at the end, he got stabbed (our director thought seeing high school kids shoot each other on stage was not okay that soon to the tragedy.) It ended up being kind of funny because the way we had it blocked, Tony was on one side of the stage, and Chino (guy who kills him) enters from the other...which works when you SHOOT someone, but when we changed it to a knife, Chino ended up having to do this Banzai-like charge across the stage to get Tony lol. It worked, but it was still a little wtf.

My junior year of high school, we actually had two school shootings in our own district, one of them at our sister school just down the road, and a bunch of people got killed. I remember that one a bit better than Columbine actually, because it was so much closer to home.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 03:16 pm

I was in fifth grade, and I didn't know about it until I came home. When i did, my parents told me to not watch the news and instead told me to read a book. ( I still remember it, 20,000 leagues under the sea) SO as I was reading, my parents were in the other room watching what happened, and I kinda evavesdropped on it. I guess the biggest result was from that point on, my Mom became one of those people that needed to read the back of every video game label to see how graphically violent it was, which was kinda funny because I was still in the Pokemon stage and the only game that I had people getting wasted was the Die hard Trilogy that she had bought for me. My brother still played Wolfenstein 3D... but I guess this was the first time Media actually made my parents hate something I enjoyed.
In highschool, they had vigils almost every year for it, and instead of just calling it Columbine rememberance, which it really was (I attended one my freshman year) they called it rememberance day. We then had a strict dress code and for a time in middle school they kept threatening us with Uniforms, eliminatiing out individuality.

This incident kinda made me pissed off at the media, for blaming others for what these two kids did, instead of acknowledging the fact that they were aware of what was going to happen. ANother thing that pissed me off was, as I was progressing through school, I was made fun of alot and the teachers did nothing about it much like their case. But instead of me snapping I was more or less able to find a better out let (Acting, Riflery, Volleyball, ect.) but I was stilll treated as a "threat".

Joined: Mar 25 2009 Posts: 55

Sephiroth wrote:

Fuckers took my idea!

I was also pretty much shit on because i wore all black.. and wore a black duster 2 school...
No one really cared to think.. oh maybe we should be nicer to him.

I love when people think like this just for the sheer stupidity of the statement. As mean as kids can be, there's an opposite way of looking at the issues. Those kids at Columbine weren't part of the "trenchcoat mafia" or even shunned by classmates. They brought dates to prom and had friends; they were just both disturbed people who wanted to be "bigger than Tim McVeigh"...and that's a literal quote from their journals.

Are people supposed to feel bad for you because you get picked on? You choose to wear all black, you choose to wear a duster, and you choose to be pushed around. Lots of kids get pushed around and are smart enough to deal with it in rational ways that DON'T include whining like a baby and shooting up their school. Don't whine about people needing to be nice to you; do something that warrants it.

Anywh... back to the main topic, I was in high school at the time though I don't remember much about the shootings while I was in classes. Once I got home I started watching all of the coverage.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 03:41 pm

Little Mac wrote:

I love when people think like this just for the sheer stupidity of the statement. As mean as kids can be, there's an opposite way of looking at the issues. Those kids at Columbine weren't part of the "trenchcoat mafia" or even shunned by classmates. They brought dates to prom and had friends; they were just both disturbed people who wanted to be "bigger than Tim McVeigh"...and that's a literal quote from their journals.

Are people supposed to feel bad for you because you get picked on? You choose to wear all black, you choose to wear a duster, and you choose to be pushed around. Lots of kids get pushed around and are smart enough to deal with it in rational ways that DON'T include whining like a baby and shooting up their school. Don't whine about people needing to be nice to you; do something that warrants it.

QFT. Could not have said it better myself.

I actually wore a trench coat to school every day (I was going through my serious X-files fan stage at the time), but I stopped wearing it for a couple months after Columbine happened. Not so much because I was afraid of what people would think, but because a) it just seemed more respectful not to wear something that, right or wrong, had such a bad association at the time, and b) didn't want to deal with the shit I would have to put up with if I did wear it. I started wearing it again at the beginning of the next year.

But yeah, like Mac said, I'm sure we were all picked on to some degree as kids; I don't know many people who weren't. Despite that, no one I knew felt the need to shoot anyone over it. Wussy emo cop out of you ask me. 'Oh no one understands my pain, so I'm going to go kill everyone.' Yeah, fuck you. Off yourself first next time, and leave everyone else out of it, assholes.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 03:53 pm

As an all black wearing Manson fan with a trench coat I was told not to go to school by my mother who feared the school and students would not look favorably towards me. She was right because as soon as I went back the next day I got hauled in consistently day after day to be searched for weapons. I stopped wearing my coat for a bit at first but they still were all over my ass. The students on the bus would spread rumors I was going to do something and bam security hauls me off to the principal's office to search me, day after fucking day.

I was really disillusioned that everyone was focusing on the wrong aspects of columbine, instead of working on making school a more harmonious environment they were totally focused on cracking down on anyone who didn't fit the "norm", punk rock kids and goth kids and metal kids, all got ostracized and harassed.

Funny thing is I was a decent student and had friends all over the spectrum, but they kept treating me like a maladjusted antisocial nutcase.

All in all I'd say I'm glad I'm out of school and in the real world where people are rational and don't give into rampant paranoia and media induced hysteria, except that's not really true now is it? Confused

Posted: Apr 21 2009 04:15 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(novel) "Now out of a print, and a good thing." -Stephen King

Posted: Apr 21 2009 05:20 pm

I have the Bachman books and I'll admit, Rage makes the least most sense to me... I didn't understand what the whole point of the story was, but I did find it bizzare about the whole "an hero" thing with all the people having the book when they snapped.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 06:09 pm

To be honest, I didn't even know Columbine happened until my school showed a program about it. I was in fifth or six grade I think, when it happened. I was in middle school when I saw that after school thing.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 06:19 pm

Anyone remember the "safety" video that showed how many weapons a puny sixth grader could supposedly sneak into the building because of his baggy pants and un tucked shirt? What a crock of shit that kid had like two sawed off shotguns a rifle and like 8 handguns, he wouldn't even be able to stand up straight with all that hardware concealed on his person, let alone keep his pants from falling down. It was all centered around why kids should wear uniforms. "School Uniforms, fighting the scourge of concealed weaponry!" Rolling Eyes

Posted: Apr 21 2009 06:22 pm

Blackout wrote:

Anyone remember the "safety" video that showed how many weapons a puny sixth grader could supposedly sneak into the building because of his baggy pants and un tucked shirt? What a crock of shit that kid had like two sawed off shotguns a rifle and like 8 handguns, he wouldn't even be able to stand up straight with all that hardware concealed on his person, let alone keep his pants from falling down. It was all centered around why kids should wear uniforms. "School Uniforms, fighting the scourge of concealed weaponry!" Rolling Eyes

I think I actually posted that vid before, but yeah it's freaking hilarious. I can see why they would want uniforms for that, but it's just them being overly paranoid.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 06:25 pm

When they instituted uniforms at my school all the creepy teachers went batshit insane touchy feely on us, walking up and pulling on the waistband of your pants to see how baggy they were and measuring the length the jeans around the leg to make sure they weren't dangerously baggy and checking a little to close for comfort to see if your shirt was really tucked in or just tucked under the belt. I got hauled to dentition for loudly calling them pedos many a time.

Teacher :"hey you those pants are too baggy come here!"
*teacher grabs for my waist
Me: Get away from my crotch you PEDOPHILE!
*teacher gets red faced then angry
Teacher : "Report to detention RIGHT NOW!"
Laughing

Posted: Apr 21 2009 06:26 pm

I just remember the NRA gun safety thing with the Bird saying "Stop, Don't Touch, Tell an adult"... I always thought that if you told an adult, they could turn around and shoot you

Posted: Apr 21 2009 06:29 pm

Remember, when a chicken raps about gun safety and tries to pull you onto his lap he might be a murderous carrot!

Posted: Apr 21 2009 07:10 pm

Slayer1 wrote:

I have the Bachman books and I'll admit, Rage makes the least most sense to me... I didn't understand what the whole point of the story was, but I did find it bizzare about the whole "an hero" thing with all the people having the book when they snapped.

I adore the Bachman Books, "Rage" included. "The Long Walk" is the one I keep coming back to over and over, but I do love "Rage." It disturbs me, though, because I feel far, far too much sympathy for the main character and I feel like that's wrong. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that King feels the same way, which is why he may be glad its out of print. I do think the message of the story is very, very important; I'm just a bit flabbergasted at my own reaction to it. Which, who knows, may be part of the point.

As for people having the book on them while they do stupid shit, its not just this story. Insane psychos have claimed inspiration from everything from "It" to "The Shining" to fucking "Pet Semetary." Idiots are always going to latch on to something, be it King, Ozzy Osbourne, Doom, GTA, whatever. I just wish people would look past those non causes, and get to the REAL point like Blackout said.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 07:21 pm

I think the classic movie 80s movie "Heathers" sums up my feelings on school violence pretty aptly. If you're going to kill the popular kids, the vapid cunt cheerleaders who make fun of fat people and the homophobic braindead jocks who shove "nerds" and "fags" into lockers, then by all means go for it. It's not the best solution, and it's probably not even a reasonable one, but hell, it'll make me smile. And besides, they DID bring it upon themselves; you reap what you sow.

But once you descend into complete misanthropy, you're out of your goddam mind, like Christian Slater's character at the end of the movie. When you start killing people indiscriminately or plotting to blow up an entire school, the majority of which have never wronged you in any way whatsoever, you've become a complete monster and you need to be put down.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 07:28 pm

Syd Lexia wrote:

I think the classic movie 80s movie "Heathers" sums up my feelings on school violence pretty aptly. If you're going to kill the popular kids, the vapid cunt cheerleaders who make fun of fat people and the homophobic braindead jocks who shove "nerds" and "fags" into lockers, then by all means go for it. It's not the best solution, and it's probably not even a reasonable one, but hell, it'll make me smile. And besides, they DID bring it upon themselves; you reap what you sow.

But once you descend into complete misanthropy, you're out of your goddam mind, like Christian Slater's character at the end of the movie. When you start killing people indiscriminately or plotting to blow up an entire school, the majority of which have never wronged you in any way whatsoever, you've become a complete monster and you need to be put down.

If you've never read "Rage," Syd, you need to. It has pretty much this very message, and presents it very eloquently imo.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 07:39 pm

Well, it's essentially vigilantism, and Americans love that at every other level of society.

Unfortunately, we will probably see a rise in teen violence, both justified and unjustified, in coming years. Studies indicate that while physical bullying has sharply declined in recent years, psychological bullying is on the rise. Now instead of shoving each other into lockers, kids are creating fake Myspace profiles to flirt with unpopular kids, getting them to admit embarassing things, then using that information to posting bulletins mocking them. This is arguably much worse than physical bullying, and is more likely to provoke a violent retaliation.

Posted: Apr 21 2009 07:59 pm

Agreed. We've already seen a huge spike in violence, not necessarily among teens, but in general. It seems like every time I turn on the net, my news alert is giving me more info about another shooting/murder/etc. Maybe I'm just noticing it more now, but I don't remember there being so much killing in years past. Sure there were sensational stories news media grabbed onto, but it seems like there are NEW ones all the time, when there weren't before. Has anyone else noticed that, or is it just me?

Posted: Apr 21 2009 08:10 pm

I have no idea where I was, I was 7 years old but I learned about it as I got older. Learning of it later had a bit of an impact on me.

There are only two events that happened that I remember "where I was that day".