Discussion.....

It is the ten year anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting. Here are some of my thoughts. Definitely feel free to share yours:

1) I was at work at a Pregnancy Resource Center in NE Portland, and all of us jammed into a tiny little room riveted around a television watching the horrors. I remember watching live as Patrick Ireland fell out of a window head first into waiting FBI agents arms. He lived, but was critically injured.

2) I grew up in Colorado, no where near Columbine. Why? Columbine High School is in Littleton, CO, which is a very (at least back then) upscale neighborhood that was way too rich for my family's income. These were not impoverished children. However, I do agree with a lot of the stereotypes that we all have about snobby rich schools. Littleton, at least remembering them when I saw them at sporting events as a teenager, was definitely a snobby, overindulged school. Sorry, that is what I saw when I was a student in Colorado only ten years before the shooting. Does that mean that such a shooting was deserved? That is not what I am saying at all. I am sayingthe bullying that snobby kids can impart can be overly cruel. No bullying deserves what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did, at all. Ever. Period. Snobby school. That is all.

3) I am still sad to this day when I think back to that time. I have similar feelings when I think back to 9/11, which was way more catastrophic. But I don't feel that way about other equally horrifying things that have happened since then. I think the only reason I feel sad about Columbine is it happened before 9/11. 9/11, and I can say this honestly, really desensitized me to horrible things.

4) A friend of mine told me lately, and she is a sharp woman, that of all the latest school shootings, all of them-no exception-has one major component in common. This includes the college shootings that have happened lately. One thing in common. When she said that, I was all ears. All of the shooters had recently, without doctor's permission or knowledge, had gone off of their anti-depressants. I don't have a source on that....yet. Give me a bit to get back to her. I find that interesting, to say the least!

5) I question that statistic in Columbine. And I am willing to be wrong on either side of this point. Both Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, Columbine's shooters, had been planning this horrible event for over a year. How does that timeline fit with their antidepressants?

6) I do pray for the victims of not just Columbine, but other shootings. For such immense violence to enter into one's day to day existence has to be shattering. It's one thing to know there is violence (ie being a soldier in a war). It's another thing to be sitting in your school cafeteria and for warfare type of violence to show up. So sad.

7) I just read a link about all the different myths that have come out of Columbine because of bad, initial reporting. Click here.

8) Pray none of this happens again. I hope my prayers are not in vain.

Thoughts?