Today is the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. A number of news agencies are running articles regarding what happened that day, and what is different today. I just finished reading one very interesting article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/20/col … index.html

It’s regarding the "myths" behind Columbine. I remember this event pretty clearly. Because it sort of hit close to home. I was just out of high school (graduated in 1998). I was a gamer, and for my last 2 years of high school, I wore a black leather trenchcoat. This was before "goth" was popular. At least not in my town. I was an outcast, i had a very small group of friends. I’ll admit though, that this was mostly by choice. I didn’t really like most of the people in my class all through grade school. At about 5th grade, when kids start turning into teens, they start to notice that everyone’s not the same, and they form opinions on who’s worth their time and who’s not. Well I was always pretty open, and friendly. I didnt pass judgement on people on my own. People were people to me, other kids my age were just other kids. I didnt care what kind of clothes they wore, or whether they looked rich or not. Unfortunately everyone around me was starting to form those opinions, I didnt have the cool clothes and those $100 sneakers. I didn’t play sports. So I was slowly removed from the cool groups. Everyone else started to "mature" and i just kept doing what made me happy, not what they dictated as the cool stuff to do. This could very well be why I didnt get into drugs, and under-age drinking.

But I’m getting off topic. My point is, I was those kids, as the newscasts described them. A loner (sort of), semi-goth (trench coat, no piercings, eye makeup, or 100% black wordrobe), and I was into violent computer games. I liked explosives (see the tennis ball bomb post!), and guns. The big difference between me and the image the media portrayed? I like to think I was more in control of my life and psychological state. I respected things that could kill me, or others. I never saw my high school as a level in Doom.

So for the past 10 year’s, I’ve felt like I could sort of relate to these kids. I don’t in any way condone what they did, just that I could see where they were coming from. Ridicule in High School is terrible, and to a kid thats already depressed or unstable, it could easily turn into what happened in Columbine. What they did was terrible, but the picture the media painted, almost made them look like as much a victim as the actual victims!

So back to the article. Apparently, these kids were not the loners that the media made them out to be. They were not the victims of bullying that the media made them out to be. Apparently, they weren’t even members of this "Trenchcoat Mafia" that they were so linked to. The group that actually called themselves the trenchcoat mafia had graduated a year before. My guess is that they just tied them to that group because of their coats, and the fact that the group was so fresh in everyone’s memory. All of this information came from eye witnesses (students and whatnot interviewed afterward). You know, the kids that actually knew these guys. Their goal was actually to bomb the school, and not go on a shooting spree, according to their journals.

So, at any rate, theres the dump of my brain for the day. Hope you enjoyed the reading!

-War