Columbine

I know, the title of this post, especially if you were a high school senior on April 20, 1999, like I was, is a downer. Nearly ten years ago, I came home from school and watched hours upon hours of news coverage of the shooting at Columbine High School. My dad and I were transfixed - I'm sure he was scared that something like this could happen to his own high school senior, but I was scared for a different reason. I didn't think it would happen to me or my class, but I worried for a long time that it would happen again, somewhere, but would be much worse. I couldn't help but think, This is just the beginning.

During our drive to Lewiston on Saturday morning, I was perusing a recent edition of Newsweek on my Kindle, and saw a review of a new book, Columbine, written by Dave Cullen, and decided to download it. (Side note: we were driving past Boardman, OR when I came across this review and decided to get the book. Two minutes later, it was downloaded to my Kindle and ready to go. I LOVE my Kindle.) Cullen spent the last ten years working on this book, and his work has paid off tremendously. He doesn't shy away from the gory details or from the mindsets of the killers and he's very candid about the mistakes he and the rest of the media made in the aftermath of the shootings, when statements from traumatized teenagers were spun into "true" legends disseminated for a public that was so eager to understand why? The law enforcement teams are also called on the carpet by Cullen, most notably for not revealing the lack of interest that some detectives had in earlier violent incidents committed by Eric Harris, the massacre's mastermind.

The book is incredibly moving, meticulously researched, and unflinching in its analysis of a town forever changed by the shootings. While the students proved to be surprisingly resilient in the face of such atrocities, the parents and school administrators' post-shooting lives paint a much different story. One of the survivor's mothers killed herself shortly after her paralyzed daughter started physical therapy. Several sets of parents and teachers ended up divorcing. Cullen shows us how the wounds never healed for so many, yet stories like that of Patrick Ireland, who was severly injured after being shot in the head but who fought his way back to nearly-full use of his limbs and cognitive functions, are beyond inspiring.

Cullen's Columbine is a powerful book. For those of you who remember watching it all unfold on TV, remember the stories of the "Trenchcoat Mafia", remember all the rumors of jocks being targeted by sullen outcasts with no friends, READ this. It debunks so many of the Columbine attack myths and paints a much more frightening, tragic and real picture of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and what really led them to kill 12 of their classmates, a beloved teacher, and finally themselves.