Vortexia's Secret

Tragedy. Nobody likes it. Well I hope not at least. But youngprofessional reminded us that yesterday was the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the news reminded me that today was the anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School. Bam, bam, one after the other (in different years of course). I still remember so much of both of them. I think it's probably best that these events stay ingrained... if we forgot about them, then history is doomed to repeat itself. I remember talking about Oklahoma City, at that awkward age where you want to be like an adult who grasps the enormity of the tragedy, yet still child-like enough to feel a little removed from it all. Maybe partially because the victims were either older or younger than us, partially because it was decided that the schools shouldn't talk about it so the parents could broach the subject with their children as they saw fit. We still talked about it. I knew parents who should have been in the building, but for one reason or another were lucky enough to not be there.

Then Columbine. I remember the fear. What if our school was next? I was then old enough to fully grasp, and the age group of those involved was the same as mine. I remember talking in class about the tragedy, about our English teacher being a wreck as she tried to deal with her own emotions, discuss it with us, and help us deal with the grieving. I remember the tapes of the incident playing endlessly on TV. Then later came the specials, the audio recordings of 911 calls, interviews with survivors... we were literally inundated with the tragedy. Then came the copycats. Schools had to adopt lockdown procedures. We had an incident involving gang retribution and a plan to take down the lunch room in a blaze of gunfire. The school wouldn't excuse absences or publicly acknowledge the plan, despite EVERYONE in the school knowing when and where it was going to happen. Snipers were posted on the roof of the building across the street. The entire school was put under lockdown. I told my mom, and I still called in sick. Missing one day of class would never have been worth sacrificing my life to a stupid fight. No shots were fired. Nobody was killed. We were lucky. Unfortunately, so many others were not. Possibly just as sad is the apathy and immunity that developed around school shootings.

The following year I conducted research on media violence using biofeedback techniques. Clips were shown of reality violence (Columbine), fictional violence, and cartoon violence. Although the study would never have passed the muster of a scientific journal, it demonstrated that people were no longer affected by the images of Columbine. I find that sad. I could make thousand of hypotheses on why that is and criticize various aspects of society and individuals, but I won't. There are too many possibilities for me to pull out only a couple, and I don't have the time or energy to discuss them all. I just wanted to reflect and share some of my own thoughts on the tragedies we are remembering this week.

P.S. Keep them in your prayers.