Theme Day

Yesterday developed into somewhat of a theme day for me. It was interesting. It started out with my roommate getting up at 5am and heading out the door for another normal day teaching high school kids. Telling them to throw out the Starbucks, turn off the cell phones, and try to stay awake during class. I woke up to the sound of her going through the morning routine, then promptly fell right back to sleep. The next two moments to shape my day were on tv. Sad...I know. First was a Dateline episode in which high school girls were set up in different rooms with laptops, wireless, and cameras to see what would happen. As to be expected they soon formed clicks, chat rooms and myspace pages flinging insults and condemnation at eachother. (None of the girls have ever met before this little exercise). A parent who's 14 year old son had recently committed suicide because of a similar "real-life" scenario was interviewed and he claimed that in this "post-Columbine age" we should really take the time to monitor what happens on the screens of teenagers computers. Next came Rosie O'Donnell. She was talking about her depression to a bunch of theater students and traced her first counseling session back to the weeks after the Columbine shooting. That event triggered something inside of her.

I guess the theme that developed....the one that I'm writing about now, is how the complexity of Columbine effects our society, even seven years later. It's a strange thing to hear people on television reference your high school and how it changed their life. Often my memory has much to do with Starbucks, with trying to stay awake during class, stressing over AP papers, news editorials and friends. To much of America, their memory of my life in high school represents an "age" or an "era" or something to be feared and fought. It's a strange phenomenon....to look back on your Senior year of high school and remember laughing at marching band practices with friends, and then to remember the sound of bullets and pipe bombs and the screams. That sound is ingrained deeply and I NEVER want to hear screaming like that again.

Overall, there is no solution and no explanation about that event, but I guess I find it kind of encouraging that people even today, reference the tragedy as though it happened last year. It seems as though something that has shaped my life in so many ways has also shaped a nation.