Columbine Changed My Teenage Life
But it wasn’t the end of it
But it wasn’t the end of it
In 1999, my third year of high school, two boys in Columbine, Colorado, changed my American teenage life when they entered their school wearing long trench coats and massacred 13 students and staff, and injured 21 others. I could never have guessed how different of a world my children would attend. However bad it may seem today, there’s still hope as long as we look toward the future together.
Armed with a sizable arsenal of guns, explosives, and ammunition, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered twelve students and one teacher, causing the American education system to shift dramatically. Following the attack, and for decades to come, school shootings became a common occurrence. No, I was not at the school or even in the same state, but for the rest of us in schools across the country, it started something no one could take back. I doubt we realized just how radical and terrible schools nationwide would become.
My children, ages nine, eleven, and fourteen today, have grown up with “shooter drills” and are treated more like prisoners than humans. So, how did we get here? Schools were not always like this in America, but the changes started on April 20th, 1999.
I grew up in Carrollton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. We were predominately white, with a large and growing Hispanic population. We also had a sizable number of African and Asian Americans, but overall, we were a diverse school compared to other schools in the southern United States.
The first change I remember was no more trench coats or super baggy jeans because hiding a gun in the pockets was possible. The fear was palpable in the hallways. Anyone who wore black clothing, painted fingernails black, or listened to Marylin Manson was now a potential threat to your life and the lives of children everywhere. Junior year was the first time we had school IDs, and we were forced to wear them at all times visibly, or we would be sent to the office for a sticker ID instead.
During my senior year, there was more tightening down on social “irregularities.” Under attack from prying eyes, the new “goth kids” began to band together. Once perfectly happy with being alone, they realized being in a group was safer and found each other. Their style became more outrageous to push back against the new social pressures. Anything they could wear and get away with, they would.
They would wear spikes, and then spikes were banned. Want to dye your hair something besides brown, blond, or black? Too bad, because it was a distraction to other students and was forbidden. Want to wear a Metallica, Marlyn Manson, or Eminem t-shirt or listen to their music? Those were all banned for being satanic, and you could do nothing to convince adults otherwise. But the changes didn’t happen only at school as the church was also changing rapidly.
Emails began to go viral with our parents stating one of the victims was asked if she believed in God, and when she said yes, they pulled the trigger. Any eyewitness or CCTV video has never verified this story, and many still recount it as if it were true. If you think stereotyping in a public school was awful in the 90s, having to attend a Southern Baptist church was worse.
The two kids who attended my church who enjoyed wearing black began to be as loud and obnoxious as possible due to the staring, whispers, and social isolation thrust upon them for being different. Teenagers can only take so much until they snap and lash out. Finally free of a dress code that singled them out, but still forced at church by scared parents who thought their kids were going to hell, laughing and making noises during prayer was their primary source of disruption. Our youth pastor finally told their parents to stop bringing them.
Meanwhile, metal detectors were installed in schools, and the police dogs who visited began sniffing gunpowder too. I remember being able to enter the building anywhere I could, but eventually, only particular doors were allowed to be entrances, while the rest were locked at all times unless you had a key. This situation caused drop-off and pickup to become 30-minute ordeals for parents who would instead drop their kids off a block away and allow them to walk into the building rather than get into a long line of dozens of cars and be late to work.
Luckily, I left high school the next year and never looked back. I thought my days of dealing with miserable teachers and “useless rules” were over, but eleven years later, I found myself in the strange and terrifying world of the modern American public school system with my children. To explain how weird and unrecognizable public school has become, here are just a few of the bizarre new rules constant school shootings have caused.
This year, after the school shooting in north Texas, my children’s elementary school implemented a new high-tech security measure for child pickup: colored pieces of paper with the child’s and teacher’s names handwritten on them. To pick up your children, you must have the same colored piece of computer paper given to parents at the start of the school year. Should you forget this high-tech piece of paper, you must go to the front office and obtain new high-tech colored paper.
However, the front office is by the pickup line for kindergarten through second grade, which causes you to wait for 20 minutes to reach the office, stand inside the office, only to return to the pickup line on the other side of the building. However, if you’re more than ten minutes late to pick up your kids, your children have been moved to the front office.
Frustrated with the high-tech security paper system, parents at my children’s school resorted to purchasing the paper at Walmart, created multiple copies, and kept them. Some parents I spoke to wrote made-up names on the form to prove they were useless. I saw teachers Mrs. Hannah Montana and Mrs. McGregor (a Braveheart reference) on one parent’s papers.
Another parent told me they would fold the form in half every few weeks to see how small they could make it before being denied their children. The parent later said they reached a playing card size before being asked to unfold it. Finally, a third parent would use similarly colored junk mail and quickly flash it for the pickup line teachers to trick them into giving their children back. Not surprisingly, it worked most of the time, but it doesn’t stop there for current children either.
Students are only allowed two restroom breaks daily, and a check-in/out computer system logs who left the room and when, how long they were gone, and when they came back. If the computer notices you were gone for longer than the time allowed, punishments are given. My teenage daughter’s middle school even shut down all the bathrooms except for one per grade level, so an adult could be stationed outside the door during every period and watch you go in and out.
Another one of her high school teachers attached a doorbell outside her classroom, and the child had to ring it to enter. Only, the teacher wouldn’t come to the door if you rang it because she knew you didn’t have time to get a tardy slip at the main office. This system was intended to teach students not to be late by forcing them to go to the office for a tardy slip. However, spending 15 minutes in line at the office for a paper causes the student to miss 33% of the class period, which is 45 minutes long, thereby causing the student to stay after school, which they aren’t allowed to do other than once a week when the teacher has office hours.
When I grew up, high school was terrible, but kids have it much worse today. I used to tell my parents they didn’t understand what it was like to be in school “now days” and my parents would reply, “Oh yeah? I was in high school too once, you know?” But I’m honest with my children now. When they tell me I don’t know what it’s like to be in school, I agree.
I don’t know what it’s like to walk through metal detectors or be tracked every minute of an eight-hour day in school. I also don’t know what it’s like to have my high school campus crawling with police after the latest school shooting occurred 30 minutes away. Or what a shooter drill is like knowing that exercise would become life or death at any moment.
I do, however, know high school isn’t the end.
I love my children as much as any parent could love their kids, and I would do anything to protect them, including teaching them that high school isn’t the best part of your life. TV shows and movies which glorify four years do not speak for the reality of what they will face. Yes, my children attend a school system I don’t recognize — a shadow of a world long destroyed by two teenagers in a state far away from me, but there is so much more to the world than your hometown and the schools you attend.
To parents who are struggling, to grandparents who are too far removed from the next generation, we might not be able to change schools back to how they were when we grew up, but we can teach our children to move forward. Our children can learn that a better future is coming if they can survive four years of prison behind locked doors, police protection, and ‘1984’ like monitoring.
Time is a strict mistress, and she pushes you through the door whether you want to go or not. I can’t provide bulletproof vests for school, but I can give hope for tomorrow. I can tell my children the truth faster than I was told because they need it to combat the darkness. Darkness within darkness might be all they can see now, but the yin-yang teaches that everything comes in cycles, and no matter how bleak their current situation may seem, a future of possibilities awaits them.
So, to the teenagers, please know you are not useless or lazy. Adults do not recognize your teenage world, which terrifies us, but we do know what comes next. Life can be so beautiful; you only need to move forward and don’t give up.