Reading: Columbine by Dave Cullen

Strange choice to read around the holidays. Why read about this tragedy?

Well for one, I follow a reading podcast called Literary Disco, and a lot of my reading choices are derived from there. Earlier this year, they did a compelling two-part episode on Columbine. The first epi was devoted to discussing the book with current high school kids, in the wake of more recent school-based shootings. The second epi was a discussion with their English teacher about the demands of being an educator in this day and age, amidst the sensation that school (and other location) shootings are rampant.

With any major event/tragedy there is the tendency to recall where we were the moment it happened. I was nonexistent when JFK was shot. But I do hold in my mind where I was with 9-11-01. I was 20, a senior in college, watching TV in the AM before I headed out to campus. I saw in real-time the 1st Twin Tower crumble. I was literally floored. I was lying on the floor. I could not get up for awhile.

So what about Columbine? Here’s the thing–I should remember Columbine. It should have particular resonance for me: Spring 1999, I was a freshman in college, a mere one academic year older than a high school senior, with that life, that mind-frame still within me. And I was still within the academia world–on a school campus, a public setting prone to mass-kill scenarios.

I was aware of what happened. But so very peripherally to the point of shame. Why wasn’t I more aware? Why did it not affect me back then as it does now, with each publicized shooting pushing me deeper in despair? I would have had to been the most ignorant, shallow college freshman to not have followed the story with rapt horror.

So, in my self-actualized 38-year-old state (or, as I term myself, a highly-functioning awkward person) it is time to expand upon my social awareness. Historical awareness. Just…awareness in general.

This book ends up being more well-rounded than any information I would have gotten about the event had I been rapt at the time. It boils down to the emergence of real-time news/media reporting, which sustains to this day. Bottom line, as we are fed information about a significant event line by line, as the event unfolds, we lack the grander scope of what is actually happening. We are force fed trees, trees, trees; that no one can see forest. What this leads to, in the pressure to be the first to report, is erroneous information. So the conceptions we had about Columbine–motive for killing (jocks bullying outcasts who wanted revenge), trigger for killing (goths with M. Manson plugged in their ears brainwashed to kill), or meaning behind the killing (silly as it sounds now, forces of satan that would ultimately be washed out by forces of good)–were completely unfounded. No target, no trigger, no big message/purpose. Just psychopathy.

Dave Cullen’s book came out in 2009, ten years after the event. That is the amount of time he put into painstakingly researching every piece of evidence and account of Columbine. The end result is the most comprehensive, accurate, objective recount.

So if it is any consolation to my insulated, ignorant 18-year-old self, had I been more aware of Columbine when it happened, I would have likely been influenced to view the tragedy through some very biased information.