We Need To Talk About C o l u m b i n e
irrelevant blog written by yours truly; the Q u e e n
this is about something serious, please don't care about poor grammar



First of all we, meaning me and you, the reader, needs to have the same definition of what Columbine means. Columbine not only refers to the Columbine massacre back on April 20 1999, but also refers to the school itself. Hopefully you already know about this massacre; you might not know much. Perhaps you don't know the simple things such as the names of the perpetrators or how many people were killed on that day. That's okay, I'm here to tell you what you need to know about the massacre, the school and the perpetrators. First. Let's talk about Columbine.

The School
Columbine High School is a high school located in Columbine, Colorado, United States of America. The school is named after the community that is named after Colorado's flower; the Columbine. Back in the 90's and probably before and after, the school focused on jocks, athletic people, who seemed to rule the school. The school had a lot of different students; athletic jocks who liked to bully, polite Christian girls and even one female students wore horns to school. You can thus tell that the school obviously had very different students, as the students all were going through the teenage phase, in which one gets overwhelmed with hormones and starts wondering who they really are.

We don't call them perpetrators now, we call them Dylan and Eric
Perhaps you remember their names, perhaps you don't. In this part of the blog, we forget that they have committed crimes, okay? Good.


Dylan Klebold

Dylan Klebold was born on September 11th 1981. Students have described him as being tall, having long hair, wearing dark clothes and a baseball hat - at least towards the end. You can easily spot him and remember "that's Dylan" because of his height, hair and very special face. You might be able to see it in this gif, or perhaps you have to google his name. He has a long face and a rather big nose. One student even described him as looking like a giant rat. I'd say that's for you to decide whether that's true or not. 
Dylan was incredibly intelligent but did not get very good grades. In his journal you can see how he writes good poems, is very good at describing things and has a great vocabulary. But sometimes he writes rather silly. Maybe nowadays we would call it "texting language", back then it'd probably be considered "edgy teenagers way of not sounding like a mature adult".
Dylan was full of love. He very often wrote about how he wanted his one true love, that he was in love, and of course he'd write about the people whom he had fallen in love with. He wrote poems, love letters, mentioned he had been thinking about what he and his crush would do together if they became a couple. But nobody seemed to love him back. There is, however, one point in his journal in which he states that he is in love with someone who loves him back. Who could this be? Well, her name is Marla Foust, and I'll get back to her later.
But he had a dark side. No girls wanted him. He barely had any friends. He got bullied at school by jocks for being different. He didn't get good grades. All of these problems turned into anger, sadness, depression. He was depressed but his parents did not know about this. They thought he was a fine and happy kid, because that's what he portrayed himself to be. He was a great deceiver. Mastered the art of seeming fine and not planning to shoot up a school. 


Eric Harris

Eric Harris was born on April 9 1981 in Kansas. Unlike Dylan, he wasn't from Colorado and had not always been in Columbine, which was one of the reasons as to why he got bullied. He had a few insecurities regarding his body as he had "physical malfunctions" so to say, lol, basically his body was a tiny bit fucked up. It wasn't anything special, it wasn't bad, it was barely anything. But this lead to him heaving insecurities. When taking off his shirt in locker rooms, other students would notice his body and bully him, which lead him to never take off his shirt. He was a very short kid compared to the average height of men and compared to his friends, as he was only 5'7 while Dylan was 6'3. 
Eric cared about his grades in school, so he got a lot of good grades. He didn't have the intelligence of Dylan, but he did have the better grades, thus meaning something must've gone right at Columbine high school. Remember the edgy teenage writing stuff I talked about earlier? Well, that's mostly how he wrote in his journal. He would talk about death, violence, crimes, Hitler and things like that. He'd draw svastikas, but I doubt he'd be a real nazi considering Dylan, his best friend, is partly Jewish. 
He was a charming boy, but he was very troubled. He most likely would've been diagnosed as a psycho or sociopath. He was a sadist, possibly depressed and had anger issues. A huge theory is that he influenced Dylan into being more like him; angry and careless, which led them to commit minor crimes like theft. If the Jefferson County Police had cared about this, the massacre might've never happened. 
No girls wanted him and he got bullied more than Dylan because of his height. Dylan himself has said that the bullies would pick more on Eric than him because he was tall. But Eric was short and generally had a few body problems while being as different as Dylan was. However, this doesn't mean that Dylan wasn't a subject to horrible bullying to. A huge difference between him and Dylan is that his parents most likely knew he was troubled. When the massacre was happening, his dad called 911, saying he thought his son was the perpetrator.


The Massacre

I can't be bothered to write the exact time - sorry! Anyway, it's around 11am on what I believe was a monday. Brooks Brown, who had known Dylan almost his entire life, and had had a few feuds with Eric but generally would be considered a friend of them, was wondering where they were as they never skipped classes; especially Eric who cared greatly about his grades.
I'm not sure what happens first, I'm too lazy to check, but somewhere around 11:10, Dylan had arrived to school with a bag of bombs that he then planted in the cafeteria in a bag. They were planned to detonate at 11:17 and would kill many students because 11:17 was the time the most students would be in the cafeteria. 
Sometime before 11:17, Eric had arrived at school. Let's cut to a crucial point here though! Brooks Brown was standing outside of the school smoking as he noticed Eric driving up unto the parking lot. Irritated and confused, he walked up to Eric and scolded him for not coming to school. Eric was wearing a white shirt that said "natural selection" and a big black duster coat, though they'd prefer to call it trench coat, something that didn't bother Brooks because Eric often wore clothing like that to school. Anyway - Brooks scolded him, but Eric didn't really seem to care much. He was about to shoot up a school, but he didn't care that a person he had before said he wanted to kill was scolding him. He just gave him a look, a serious look, that meant that no, he didn't want to kill Brooks. "Brooks, I like you now. Get out of here. Go home," he said. Intense, but almost chuckling. Brooks listened.
BOOM it's 11:17 and nothing is happening. The bombs aren't beginning to detonate. So what was supposed to be the second act of the massacre now became the only thing they did; shooting. They were both outside by the parking lot, walking towards an entrance to the school as they meet two students. They'd shoot them both. One died, the other got paralyzed. Rachel Scott is the name of the first victim; a sweet Christian girl, who is now used by her parents to get money. Oh well. A few students walk down the staircase, and they get shot. One of them die. 
Obviously the gun shots can be heard inside the cafeteria, so an infamous teacher named Dave Sanders told students to run, to hide, to get away. He spent a great amount of time trying to save the students, but at one point he was running down a hallway... away from Eric and Dylan. He got shot. A student would later try to save him, but he'd die. 
Now the most famous part about the massacre. The perpetrators enter the library in which students are hiding under tables. A teacher is calling 9/11. You can hear Eric and Dylan in the call. You can hear them shouting "get up". You can hear a student shout "mom" seconds before he is killed. Anyway !!! They walk into the library and they start shooting at the people beneath the tables, sometimes saying "peekaboo" and often saying "yeah" or "woo"; things expressing that they liked what they were doing. The library is where most of the victims got killed, but the library is the place another victim was sparred. And his name was John Ce- John Savage. At one point he was in contact with Eric and Dylan, as they asked if he was John Savage. He then got up and said yes and asked what they were doing. "Killing people" is what Dylan replied. "Are you gonna kill me?" John asked. And they said no and told him to run. And so he did.
After shooting for a few minutes, the started shooting at the police who was right outside but didn't go inside the school. After doing that for a very short while, the massacre ended. They killed themselves very close to the victims. Eric shot himself in the mouth, Dylan shot himself in the head. And so the massacre had ended, but it still took police hours to finally enter the school.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wanted to be known, famous, they wanted people to remember the massacre, remember them. They were nobodies trying to be somebodies (Marilyn Manson song inspired by them), and in the end they became somebodies. Ask any American about gun control and school shootings and I'm sure they'll use Columbine as their first example, because Columbine had so many victims and was this huge fucking thing. But we don't only need to talk about Columbine because of gun laws in the United States.
You might hate the perpetrators and think they're inhumane bastards who deserved to die - many people think that. If you do, then you definitely need to learn about Columbine. We need to look at why they decided to shoot up their school. Why? Well, it's not a hard question to answer. Bullying, mental problems, not getting listened to, not getting the proper love they needed, revenge because of the bullying. "Eric and Dylan created this tragedy, but Columbine created them" is a quote by Brooks Brown that's extremely accurate because Eric and Dylan did create the tragedy, but Columbine High School created them. They created victims who then turned to teasing others themselves. Victims who related to sad techno or rock music and violent movies. They taught them that you can do horrible stuff without any consequences. But Eric and Dylan didn't like being bullied. They wanted revenge. This could've been stopped. The parents, especially Dylan's, knew about shit happening at the school. But the bullying didn't stop. The parents nor teachers stepped in to stop. It just continued. They could've done so much more. And that's one of the reasons why we need to talk about Columbine. Because bullying is a fucking serious issue that we need to address.

We also need to talk about Columbine because of mental illnesses in teenagers. Although Eric did get some sort of anger management help, he didn't receive any helped that made him less angry, less sadistic, all that stuff. Nothing really seemed to change. Dylan was extremely depressed, but his parents didn't notice, but now, in the year of 2016, they know that there were signs of him being depressed. Signs they didn't think twice about.
Their mental illnesses are a HUGE factor as to why they felt the need to shoot up their school. And you know what? They could've gotten help. They could've gotten better. Happier. But nobody paid attention. Nobody cared. Nobody thought twice. Nobody listened. So many signs, but nobody gave a single flying fuck. Mental illnesses are serious as fuck and I know so many people on VP have some sort of a mental illness, so you better agree with me that teenagers need to be taken serious when it comes to mental illnesses. The Columbine massacre could've been prevented. But nobody thought twice about the nobodies, the outcasts, the weirdos.

Nobody cared to prevent the massacre, but we can prevent another massacre. There's so much focus on mental illnesses and bullying these days, and that's so good. We need to spread awareness. We need to talk about these things. We need to help. We need to make a difference. Because we can prevent another massacre. We can help young teenagers in need. We fucking can.



Conclusion

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were two human boys influenced by bullying and mental illnesses. They were suicidal, and mixing suicidal with wanting revenge meant that they wanted to go out after killing people. It's absolutely horrible. It's a tragedy. But Columbine is important. It's not only important so that you know how important it is to prevent bullying and help people with mental illnesses.
Columbine is also important because you might know someone like Eric and Dylan. You might know someone who will turn into them. They could be so sweet and charming. They were normal people. But different. And it got too fucked up in the end. 
I need you to see them as fellow human beings. Because if you don't see them as humans, if you don't understand how fucking important Columbine is, then you're only making it worse. Even a few days after the massacre, some people let them be at a memorial along with the victims, because they thought they were victims too. Days after the massacre. They wanted to forgive them and said that Jesus would forgive them. 

"Shooting the kids at Columbine was apparently easier than fitting in at the school."  Brooks Brown.