Columbine 20th Anniversary

Has it only been twenty years? Feels like longer...a lifetime even...

I don’t remember where I was when I heard the news. Probably home. What I do remember is the shock...that lingered. I was a senior in high school...a high school like Columbine, where students attended (and sometimes skipped) class, ignored teachers, whispered rumors, and worried about their social standing...within carelessly constructed allegiances...divisions that ruled behavior....jocks, and skaters, nerds, and Goths... and the kids deemed “weirdos,” outsiders, by our oh so empathetic teenage selves...Social outcasts, tortured by their peers...some to the breaking point. 

It could have been us.  

I remember that thought...how it settled into my core, pulsed through my veins... fear that any of my classmates could be the next shooter. At the time it seemed like paranoia....after all, nothing like this had happened before. An anomaly. No reason to panic...mourn, sure. Send thoughts and prayers to those students in Colorado, to the families of those twelve who wouldn’t graduate. Time would prove it was an outlier...(a rare crime committed by deranged youth...). How naive we were...

The shock started to wear off, even as the media flooded us with details — the weapons used, the students barricaded in choir rooms, the abandoned backpacks...images of those who ran out the back, thinking they could escape into the woods...sitting ducks... for two teen boys poised for revenge...their trench coats ... forever a symbol of that day...

If time proved anything, it’s that we easily forget events we don’t personally live through...the trauma belongs to others, so we conveniently tuck away the news...Pretend we are safe...an entire nation with its head in the sand....hooked on the illusion of security.

Twenty years....50 more shootings...we no longer feel the shock... have become familiar, comfortable even, with the crisis. It belongs to “others” but never us....so we continue ...

Prepared to suffocate in our illusion ...

with our heads down, and our self-righteous targets in the air.

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Art credit: Jennifer Ivanovic http://jenniferivanovic.com/portfolio/silent-treatment