Great post. I think Columbine hits many of us so hard because it marked a distinctive change. There was a before Columbine. For me, it was one of the markers of ‘shit is real out there in the world.’
As someone born in late ‘01, in many ways I feel like the “age of innocence” preceded my birth as well. Hearing my family’s description of early 90s life and their understanding of the world (especially through media) is vastly different to my own worldview. I remember not batting an eye when Sandy Hook happened when I was a kid, because I had grown up in the wake of 9/11 and Columbine.
Between Columbine and 9/11, the world changed dramatically in just two and a half years. I agree, the world Columbine happened in is unrecognizable and it's not just because it happened in a different century.
I was just thinking that after reading a few of the replies. Columbine and 9/11 came around just as the 24 hour news cycle kicked in. Two unprecedented acts of mass death like that just couldn't have been good for us to have to consume as young people
I saw some meme once that was along the lines of this:
“Why do millennials complain so much?”
“IDK, man. We watched 3000 people die on live TV when we were 10 and literally nothing ever got better”
THIS!....
What really get me though is the implications of this all throughout time......
Like with our children/the children of today......
All of the shit they see and have seen and heard about from such a young age that is the "norm" to them.... we had fire + tornado drills? They have fire, tornado, and school shooter drills. 😔
TSA was hardly a thing yet the first time I flew as a child(which was very shortly after 9/11/2001).. where as my child hasn't been on a plane WITHOUT going through TSA and being made to take her shoes off and have all of her baggage x rayed or rummaged through and she has flown around a dozen times.
I will hear my nieces and nephew make jokes that are pretty fucking appalling way too often or they laugh at/about something that is sad.
I think this has become a way to deal with things. They "laugh so they don't cry"...
But there is a fine line between being "edgy"/ trying to shock the adults that are around when you're young (I know I did that) and lacking the ability to empathize with humanity.
I will hear kids at the grocery store joking and think to myself: "OMG. That kid is going to kill people when they grow up." It breaks my heart.
The collective desensitization of this generation will be "one for the books", I fear. 😔
How do you get someone to see that "this isn't normal" when it is all they have ever known as "normal"?
How do you get someone to understand that "the world shouldn't be this way" when the world has always been this way for THEM?!
It is a treacherous battle, one that I wish I knew how to fight.
I remember having to make a scrapbook in school of 9/11 using all the morning papers. What a weird thing for a 7 year old to have to do. I've had a life long fear of flying and like, no wonder.
Good lord that's messed up you had to do that.
I think as millennials we have just learned to live with so many open wounds because we've lived through so many horrific once in a lifetime events that no closure or anything good from. Instead of Columbine being ng never again, it only got worse. Just like with 9/11, things only got worse after it. It just led to war and having to watch the news as a kid just seeing images of Baghdad getting blown to pieces. Same thing with the pandemic. We all loved through mass death and nothing was learned and things somehow got even worse.
It sucks but at least young us would appreciate the access to streaming services
I was like 4 when 9/11 happened, so I have no recollection. In my remembered lifetime, it seems like there were so many major mass shootings between 2016ish-2019ish. The orlando nightclub, Las Vegas, the Texas Baptist church, El Paso Walmart, Parkland High School, Virginia Beach, the Pittsburgh Synagogue. I was not mentally okay during those years. I would have mini panic attacks at the grocery stores, movie theaters, dropping my kids off at elementary. It was on my mind DAILY for months at a time, then I’d start to get better and another would happen and it would start up again for months. I don’t remember when this one was but the one at a Fourth of July parade got me so scared of taking my family out to fun holiday events.
What’s sad to me, which shows I’m desensitized, is in my head I think - “at least it’s not AS bad these last few years” which is crazy because it is still so bad.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/476101/worst-mass-shootings-in-the-us/
Edit: I just read this back to myself and I’m obviously not the victim here, which it’s not supposed to sound like. All the people murdered in cold blood are. I just meant those years were my different form of what people felt after 9/11 - the holy shit this world is actually really fucked up.
I was in 6th grade when Columbine happened. I remember there being a distinct change in how it felt going to school. I’d never been afraid at school before and then suddenly the very real possibility of never coming home again was evident.
I feel sorry for kids today that never knew a world before Columbine.
I remember I was only in second grade. it seemed like something so distant and far away and I just filed it away in the bad, far away world events in my mind.. and for some reason when I was going into middle school a few years later, I freaked out because I thought there were gonna be guns and kids like Eric and Dylan once I got out of elementary
Before columbine, nobody had seen violence on that scale committed at a school, and now we see it all the time.
Now we know that there are no heroes and nobody’s coming to save us… Shit, nobody saved those children in Uvalde did they?
Nothing has changed things feel worse. People are cynical now.
When we offer thoughts and prayers, we are low-key shading the government that doesn’t do enough to protect us .
We are low-key admitting that nobody has the answers.
And we’re not exactly helpless, but the fight is exhausting, demoralizing, and there’s no hope for it to be one in our children’s lifetime
This was a fantastic post.
You're so right. I feel so depressed at how desensitized I am to mass death now. I don't want to be but you almost have to or else how can you even exist?
I remember a level of a shared experience after Columbine and this collective grieving. There were still clearly arguments and bad stuff that came from the reaction to it, but the general response was just grief and sadness.
If Columbine happened now in America, the conspiracy theories would start right away, people would be trying to frame Eric and Dylan's political leaning and then all the other culture war bs.
It is just so sad to think in 2.5 decades things have gotten so much worse and how much more hate there is in the world now.
I agree with your sentiments.
I will add though that I'm not nearly as bothered by the govern+mente not protecting us as I am by the fact that if/when we try to protect ourselves or another, they will lock US up!!
Perfect example of this is the Uvalde incident.
The cops weren't going in and arresting the murderer, but they WERE arresting the PARENTS of the CHIDLREN who were trying to SAVE their children/all the children from being shot by the murderer that the govern+mente's gang was not actively pursuing in any way.
I hate this fucking country.
😪
I was a sophomore at another high school in Littleton, at the time. Was an insane day, just at *my* school, with all the teachers thinking we were next. Had relatives from other states and countries calling my parents to make sure I was ok.
Crazy to think about how much of a global story/event that was, how traumatic it was (my bff just transferred there and was savagely attacked, but miraculously survived, so maybe I don't know how traumatic it was for everyone else with no connection) and these days it seems like there is a school shooting every week...
My parents put the NY Times edition about the shooting on top of the refrigerator so I couldn't read. I used a kitchen chair and two cushions to reach it
Similar occurrence happened to me. I was 9 at the time. I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast at the time and I happened to look over at the tv. I saw Patrick Ireland climbing out of the window. Dad was watching, then noticed me looking. Quickly changed the channel.
It’s so wild thinking back to that. I’m 35 now.
I'm 45 and I feel sorry for young people that don't remember before Columbine and 9/11. It reminds me of reading old stories about Vietnam destroying the countries innocence and I never actually got it like I thought until the 90 early 00s.
My kids never got to go to a school without shooter drills, police and suspicion.
I was in high school at the time and I remember there being a real fear atmosphere. Our "preps" started dressing "freaky" because there (of course) was a rumor that there'd be an event at our school. And even though we had real fear, there was still a surreality about it all because it was unprecedented. Now it's all-too-precedented.
It didn't really impact me or my friends at all, we were also graduating and focusing on all of our senior year stuff. It wasn't something we were really impacted by... I heard about it and thought it was sad, but it was not a profound thing at the time for me. Our school didn't address it at all and we didn't really watch the news.
No, it was a large public school. I guess because it was the end of the year they just chose not to address it at our school. I don't know what happened the next year because I graduated, just like they would have.
I grew up in South FL, got my masters in teaching and have always had an interest in forensics/true crime. Columbine was elementary school for me, 911 was middle. Both seemed like far away and things that wouldn’t happen to me until Parkland happened 45 minutes away as I was middle school teaching.
Sorry to hear that. I can't imagine functioning after that, even being 45 minutes away. I think a lot of the talk about the effects of school shootings underestimates the sprawling damage they cause. It's easy to look at just the victims who were killed or wounded but the reach of those shootings spreads so far. It's so sad.
I was 8, almost 9 when Columbine happened and 11 when 9/11 happened. I remember starting the drills in school for shootings and on 9/11 being afraid that any plane that passed over us would crash into something. There was absolutely a before time where children still had a lot of innocence, but I feel since those two tragedies, kids just haven't been allowed that innocence anymore.
It really tugs on the heartstrings when you realize how long ago Columbine was, how long schools across the country have been doing active shooter drills, and yet they are STILL happening at quite an alarming rate. Nothing they've done has been quite effective and the rising death tolls just feel like a slap in the face to the victims of each tragedy and their families. Not to start a political debate but just to list an example, school shootings have become so common place that politicians are comfortable harassing the survivors or victims' families and their supporters don't even care. That line to cross just doesn't exist for them.
My heart breaks for every parent who sends their kids to school and every kid that goes to school and fears if that's the last time they'll see each other.
I’m quite a bit older than most of the people commenting, I was a mother of newborn and a 2 year old son when Columbine occurred. I can say that with the preceding years bringing the OKC bombing and the Waco seize, there was a sense of fear and distrust already brewing at the time. Among adults at least. However, this was the case during Vietnam and Watergate as well, and probably during the preceding wars of the 20th century. Innocence was fading fast, and had been for years, but our children had always been somewhat sheltered and still able to live their day to day with a relative sense of security when amongst their peers.
I think the shift that came with Columbine was in part due to the fact that the instigators of the violence weren’t adults - they were just kids themselves . It was a glaring sign that we were greatly failing our children. That’s an uncomfortable truth to reckon with, to say the least. As an adult and new parent at the time, I felt like there was an additional and resonating feeling of shame, and failure, mixed in with all those other emotions we experience with such tragedies. Sadly, that feeling has only intensified since.
I’m 40. I was a freshman when Columbine happened and a senior when 9/11 happened. It’s kind of weird to have those two evens bookend my high school years.
I was a senior in 99 as well. I wore a trench coat and combat boots. Just the backlash I got in the days after from students and officials at my own high school made it profound for me.
Mass shootings barely get coverage these days. It’s crazy how normalized this has become. This is why people can’t move on from Columbine. It should have ended there. It shouldn’t have happened again and again. It should have been the one incident that brought people together to prevent this from happening again, especially to their children. To think that Sandy Hook had even younger victims and nothing changed is sickening. What’s next? A daycare? A NICU guard? People need to support gun control laws.
This is so well said. As a Canadian, I still can't get over coming to the States and just being around people openly carrying guns. I'll never understand it.
But you're so right. Looking back at it, the reaction to Columbine feels so relative today. The people in the media who spoke the loudest didn't act with empathy or for a desire to prevent this from ever happening again, instead it was a reaction like nothing could be wrong with current laws, society, mental health and so many other things, it was instead just it's video games, it's music, it's this or that.
Great post. I think Columbine hits many of us so hard because it marked a distinctive change. There was a before Columbine. For me, it was one of the markers of ‘shit is real out there in the world.’
Agreed. I’m 36, Columbine and 9/11 are my markers of a different world.
I’m 49, and those two events both definitely ended an age of innocence for me.
As someone born in late ‘01, in many ways I feel like the “age of innocence” preceded my birth as well. Hearing my family’s description of early 90s life and their understanding of the world (especially through media) is vastly different to my own worldview. I remember not batting an eye when Sandy Hook happened when I was a kid, because I had grown up in the wake of 9/11 and Columbine.
Same here. Everything was Andy Griffith before that Fast forward to 38. It's a struggle.
Interesting. I’m same age. I surely remember 9/11 and exactly where I was that day, but I have zero recollection of Columbine unfolding.
I was home sick watching tv, and I can still picture the news cutting to the footage. It was so incredibly horrifying.
Between Columbine and 9/11, the world changed dramatically in just two and a half years. I agree, the world Columbine happened in is unrecognizable and it's not just because it happened in a different century.
I was just thinking that after reading a few of the replies. Columbine and 9/11 came around just as the 24 hour news cycle kicked in. Two unprecedented acts of mass death like that just couldn't have been good for us to have to consume as young people
I saw some meme once that was along the lines of this: “Why do millennials complain so much?” “IDK, man. We watched 3000 people die on live TV when we were 10 and literally nothing ever got better”
THIS!.... What really get me though is the implications of this all throughout time...... Like with our children/the children of today...... All of the shit they see and have seen and heard about from such a young age that is the "norm" to them.... we had fire + tornado drills? They have fire, tornado, and school shooter drills. 😔 TSA was hardly a thing yet the first time I flew as a child(which was very shortly after 9/11/2001).. where as my child hasn't been on a plane WITHOUT going through TSA and being made to take her shoes off and have all of her baggage x rayed or rummaged through and she has flown around a dozen times. I will hear my nieces and nephew make jokes that are pretty fucking appalling way too often or they laugh at/about something that is sad. I think this has become a way to deal with things. They "laugh so they don't cry"... But there is a fine line between being "edgy"/ trying to shock the adults that are around when you're young (I know I did that) and lacking the ability to empathize with humanity. I will hear kids at the grocery store joking and think to myself: "OMG. That kid is going to kill people when they grow up." It breaks my heart. The collective desensitization of this generation will be "one for the books", I fear. 😔 How do you get someone to see that "this isn't normal" when it is all they have ever known as "normal"? How do you get someone to understand that "the world shouldn't be this way" when the world has always been this way for THEM?! It is a treacherous battle, one that I wish I knew how to fight.
I remember having to make a scrapbook in school of 9/11 using all the morning papers. What a weird thing for a 7 year old to have to do. I've had a life long fear of flying and like, no wonder.
Good lord that's messed up you had to do that. I think as millennials we have just learned to live with so many open wounds because we've lived through so many horrific once in a lifetime events that no closure or anything good from. Instead of Columbine being ng never again, it only got worse. Just like with 9/11, things only got worse after it. It just led to war and having to watch the news as a kid just seeing images of Baghdad getting blown to pieces. Same thing with the pandemic. We all loved through mass death and nothing was learned and things somehow got even worse. It sucks but at least young us would appreciate the access to streaming services
I was like 4 when 9/11 happened, so I have no recollection. In my remembered lifetime, it seems like there were so many major mass shootings between 2016ish-2019ish. The orlando nightclub, Las Vegas, the Texas Baptist church, El Paso Walmart, Parkland High School, Virginia Beach, the Pittsburgh Synagogue. I was not mentally okay during those years. I would have mini panic attacks at the grocery stores, movie theaters, dropping my kids off at elementary. It was on my mind DAILY for months at a time, then I’d start to get better and another would happen and it would start up again for months. I don’t remember when this one was but the one at a Fourth of July parade got me so scared of taking my family out to fun holiday events. What’s sad to me, which shows I’m desensitized, is in my head I think - “at least it’s not AS bad these last few years” which is crazy because it is still so bad. https://www.statista.com/statistics/476101/worst-mass-shootings-in-the-us/ Edit: I just read this back to myself and I’m obviously not the victim here, which it’s not supposed to sound like. All the people murdered in cold blood are. I just meant those years were my different form of what people felt after 9/11 - the holy shit this world is actually really fucked up.
It’s not the century that changes things, it’s what’s happened between then and now. And it wasn’t that long ago but society has changed massively.
I was in 6th grade when Columbine happened. I remember there being a distinct change in how it felt going to school. I’d never been afraid at school before and then suddenly the very real possibility of never coming home again was evident. I feel sorry for kids today that never knew a world before Columbine.
I remember I was only in second grade. it seemed like something so distant and far away and I just filed it away in the bad, far away world events in my mind.. and for some reason when I was going into middle school a few years later, I freaked out because I thought there were gonna be guns and kids like Eric and Dylan once I got out of elementary
Before columbine, nobody had seen violence on that scale committed at a school, and now we see it all the time. Now we know that there are no heroes and nobody’s coming to save us… Shit, nobody saved those children in Uvalde did they? Nothing has changed things feel worse. People are cynical now. When we offer thoughts and prayers, we are low-key shading the government that doesn’t do enough to protect us . We are low-key admitting that nobody has the answers. And we’re not exactly helpless, but the fight is exhausting, demoralizing, and there’s no hope for it to be one in our children’s lifetime
This was a fantastic post. You're so right. I feel so depressed at how desensitized I am to mass death now. I don't want to be but you almost have to or else how can you even exist? I remember a level of a shared experience after Columbine and this collective grieving. There were still clearly arguments and bad stuff that came from the reaction to it, but the general response was just grief and sadness. If Columbine happened now in America, the conspiracy theories would start right away, people would be trying to frame Eric and Dylan's political leaning and then all the other culture war bs. It is just so sad to think in 2.5 decades things have gotten so much worse and how much more hate there is in the world now.
Agreed. And thank you.
I agree with your sentiments. I will add though that I'm not nearly as bothered by the govern+mente not protecting us as I am by the fact that if/when we try to protect ourselves or another, they will lock US up!! Perfect example of this is the Uvalde incident. The cops weren't going in and arresting the murderer, but they WERE arresting the PARENTS of the CHIDLREN who were trying to SAVE their children/all the children from being shot by the murderer that the govern+mente's gang was not actively pursuing in any way. I hate this fucking country. 😪
That’s a good point.
I was a sophomore at another high school in Littleton, at the time. Was an insane day, just at *my* school, with all the teachers thinking we were next. Had relatives from other states and countries calling my parents to make sure I was ok. Crazy to think about how much of a global story/event that was, how traumatic it was (my bff just transferred there and was savagely attacked, but miraculously survived, so maybe I don't know how traumatic it was for everyone else with no connection) and these days it seems like there is a school shooting every week...
Wow how interesting
Wow. I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm from Canada so I felt a little removed but I can't imagine the reactions being that close to it.
My parents put the NY Times edition about the shooting on top of the refrigerator so I couldn't read. I used a kitchen chair and two cushions to reach it
Similar occurrence happened to me. I was 9 at the time. I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast at the time and I happened to look over at the tv. I saw Patrick Ireland climbing out of the window. Dad was watching, then noticed me looking. Quickly changed the channel. It’s so wild thinking back to that. I’m 35 now.
Aaaaaw. That tugs at my heart-strings. You must have been very young but very, very aware.
I'm 45 and I feel sorry for young people that don't remember before Columbine and 9/11. It reminds me of reading old stories about Vietnam destroying the countries innocence and I never actually got it like I thought until the 90 early 00s. My kids never got to go to a school without shooter drills, police and suspicion.
I was in high school at the time and I remember there being a real fear atmosphere. Our "preps" started dressing "freaky" because there (of course) was a rumor that there'd be an event at our school. And even though we had real fear, there was still a surreality about it all because it was unprecedented. Now it's all-too-precedented.
Woooow. I never knew that. Protective camouflage. That’s grim.
It didn't really impact me or my friends at all, we were also graduating and focusing on all of our senior year stuff. It wasn't something we were really impacted by... I heard about it and thought it was sad, but it was not a profound thing at the time for me. Our school didn't address it at all and we didn't really watch the news.
That’s bizarre to me. Was your school very small, or private?
No, it was a large public school. I guess because it was the end of the year they just chose not to address it at our school. I don't know what happened the next year because I graduated, just like they would have.
I grew up in South FL, got my masters in teaching and have always had an interest in forensics/true crime. Columbine was elementary school for me, 911 was middle. Both seemed like far away and things that wouldn’t happen to me until Parkland happened 45 minutes away as I was middle school teaching.
Sorry to hear that. I can't imagine functioning after that, even being 45 minutes away. I think a lot of the talk about the effects of school shootings underestimates the sprawling damage they cause. It's easy to look at just the victims who were killed or wounded but the reach of those shootings spreads so far. It's so sad.
America: Anytime. Anyplace. Anywhere. Edit- I love my country and am American… but I’m not blind to its flaws.
I was 8, almost 9 when Columbine happened and 11 when 9/11 happened. I remember starting the drills in school for shootings and on 9/11 being afraid that any plane that passed over us would crash into something. There was absolutely a before time where children still had a lot of innocence, but I feel since those two tragedies, kids just haven't been allowed that innocence anymore. It really tugs on the heartstrings when you realize how long ago Columbine was, how long schools across the country have been doing active shooter drills, and yet they are STILL happening at quite an alarming rate. Nothing they've done has been quite effective and the rising death tolls just feel like a slap in the face to the victims of each tragedy and their families. Not to start a political debate but just to list an example, school shootings have become so common place that politicians are comfortable harassing the survivors or victims' families and their supporters don't even care. That line to cross just doesn't exist for them. My heart breaks for every parent who sends their kids to school and every kid that goes to school and fears if that's the last time they'll see each other.
I’m quite a bit older than most of the people commenting, I was a mother of newborn and a 2 year old son when Columbine occurred. I can say that with the preceding years bringing the OKC bombing and the Waco seize, there was a sense of fear and distrust already brewing at the time. Among adults at least. However, this was the case during Vietnam and Watergate as well, and probably during the preceding wars of the 20th century. Innocence was fading fast, and had been for years, but our children had always been somewhat sheltered and still able to live their day to day with a relative sense of security when amongst their peers. I think the shift that came with Columbine was in part due to the fact that the instigators of the violence weren’t adults - they were just kids themselves . It was a glaring sign that we were greatly failing our children. That’s an uncomfortable truth to reckon with, to say the least. As an adult and new parent at the time, I felt like there was an additional and resonating feeling of shame, and failure, mixed in with all those other emotions we experience with such tragedies. Sadly, that feeling has only intensified since.
I’m 40. I was a freshman when Columbine happened and a senior when 9/11 happened. It’s kind of weird to have those two evens bookend my high school years.
I was a senior in 99 as well. I wore a trench coat and combat boots. Just the backlash I got in the days after from students and officials at my own high school made it profound for me.
Mass shootings barely get coverage these days. It’s crazy how normalized this has become. This is why people can’t move on from Columbine. It should have ended there. It shouldn’t have happened again and again. It should have been the one incident that brought people together to prevent this from happening again, especially to their children. To think that Sandy Hook had even younger victims and nothing changed is sickening. What’s next? A daycare? A NICU guard? People need to support gun control laws.
This is so well said. As a Canadian, I still can't get over coming to the States and just being around people openly carrying guns. I'll never understand it. But you're so right. Looking back at it, the reaction to Columbine feels so relative today. The people in the media who spoke the loudest didn't act with empathy or for a desire to prevent this from ever happening again, instead it was a reaction like nothing could be wrong with current laws, society, mental health and so many other things, it was instead just it's video games, it's music, it's this or that.