“If everyone knows each other, and can pretty much get along, then maybe these things wouldn’t happen.”
—Sean Graves, 16, Littleton, Colorado
“If I could say anything when people stare, I suppose it would be, ‘What are you looking at?….’ I feel embarrassed.… Then it occurs to me that this is what happened to Dylan and Eric.”
—Sean Graves, 16, Littleton, Colorado
“I played the saxophone before, and that was important to me. I can only play half the notes now, so I don’t generally play it anymore.”
—Richard Castaldo, 18, Littleton, Colorado
THE BOYS I MET WITH EARLY IN 2000 IN LITTLETON, COLORADO, have a lot to say to America. They have survived a trauma that they, and our nation, will not forget. Many were shot at directly; others cowered under auditorium or library seats, hiding from the snipers. Several were gunned down and left paralyzed, and are now in wheelchairs. Others were able to flee the gunfire but then went home to see the tragedy repeated endlessly on virtually every major national television network. All of them lost cherished friends and loved ones. All remain emotionally scarred. Said eighteen-year-old Andrew Fraser: “I don’t know if it can be repaired.”
Both during the shooting that took place in April 1999 and right up until today, the boys of Columbine have been shocked into reexamining many of their assumptions about human nature. Their faith has been severely tested. These are courageous boys. But they are also boys desperate to understand why the shooting took place.
“I don’t know where the devil comes from,” Sean Graves said, shifting his body to get more comfortable in his wheelchair. “Maybe it’s around us, or maybe it can be inside of us.”
Some of the boys told me they finally were no longer afraid to go to school—although for a time the fear that the tragedy could replay itself was there. Others said they still have nightmares, that although the high school has been refurbished and student spirit has begun to return, they constantly feel terrified that something terrible could happen again. “It can get better,” said an astute eleven-year-old, Brian Barenberg, “but I don’t think it can ever go away completely.”
The children of Littleton, Colorado, have of course been severely traumatized. Young Brian Barenberg is right—it probably will not ever go away completely. The young people, the community that goes through something like this is never quite the same. But the boys I spoke with spoke eloquently of their deep sadness and anxiety, their utter confusion during and after the incident, their paranoia about reprisal, their shock that fate chose them to educate a nation about violence.
“I’m pretty sure it could happen again,” said sixteen-year-old John Bujaci, who spent several terrifying minutes trapped in an elevator during the shooting.
Andrew Fraser told us that it is still hard for him to return to a school where he was nearly killed: “It’s been so bad some days that I’ll actually call my parents and say, ‘I can’t be here anymore. I can’t take this.’ ”
While a few of the boys spoke about the need for tightened gun control and more school security, most suggested that the merciless shootings probably had much more to do with how Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were treated both at home and at school. Although the facts are still not clear to anyone, some boys surmised that the killers may have been disconnected from their parents and may not have received the loving supervision that would have caught the boys’ pathology before it was too late. Most of the boys I talked with cast a critical eye on a peer culture that never welcomed Eric or Dylan, a culture (similar to cultures elsewhere for boys) of teasing, bullying, and hazing, a culture that increases emotional disconnection. Most of the boys I talked with felt this had become too much for two boys who simply never found a place among their peers.
When asked what advice they had for fellow students at other schools across the country, the boys emphasized that students should stop the teasing or bullying, that they had better make good friends and keep them. “Maybe a couple of times I used to bully some kids,” John Bujaci said bravely. “I haven’t bullied anybody since the shooting, though. I try to be nicer to people, even if I don’t like them.”
Sadly, many of the boys I spoke with did not seem to have had the chance yet to grieve fully over the trauma and loss they had experienced. While many had received counseling at school, at church, or privately, and though all of them spoke about the thoughtful steps Columbine High School has taken to secure the building and crack down on teasing and bullying, I sensed that many of the boys were eager for more opportunities to talk, to find deeper meaning or lessons to learn for the future about people and behavior—to talk through their reactions to the experience, express their fears and anxieties and cry it all out, or as much as possible, in the arms of their friends and loved ones.
Several boys remarked about how quickly things seemed to go back to normal, with “normal” being the expectation that they would steel themselves against their emotions, put the past behind them, “get on with it,” and revert to life at school, where the teasing and peer harassment—despite the school’s efforts and good intentions—would return. “The first two weeks after the shooting occurred, Columbine was one big family, one big group hug the whole time,” said Andrew Fraser. “But after a couple of months of being back in school, everybody just kind of recirculated and spread right back into their old cliques.… I feel angry a lot of times because even after all that happened at our school, I still see stuff in the halls, a lot of poking fun behind people’s backs.”
Many of the boys we spoke with said how meaningful it was to be able to go to the slain students’ funerals, because these services were some of their only chances to let down their guard and share how traumatized, how sad and afraid they truly are. “If you are around a bunch of people who are hurting just like you are, it’s easier to show your feelings and deal with them,” explained fifteen-year-old Dennis Majewski.
Yet the boys stressed that as completely acceptable as it was to emote at a memorial service or at a wake, back at school, life simply must go on, the tears must be held back, the sadness, as per usual, must be banished from public view. Despite being severely disabled by the shooting, Sean Graves told us, “I just pretend it never happened because no one really talks about it at school. They probably talk about it with each other, but not to me.”
These brave boys have a lot to teach us about the kind of society we have become. They are clear, as we must be, that what they have experienced is not limited to Littleton, Colorado, but is endemic to America. For the tragedy they endured to have any positive meaning, we must listen to exactly what these boys are telling us. They describe a nation in which the media need to be more aware of the impact they have on the people involved in a tragedy; in helping a community to heal from a tragedy. They speak of a high school culture in which the pressure to be a “jock” can be so intense and the hazing so bad that violence is the only natural result. But the boys of Littleton, Colorado, speak about forgiveness, too. “As hard as it is, I can say that I do forgive them,” Andrew Fraser said of the late Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. “But they’re not people I plan to meet with up in heaven.”
Andrew Fraser, 18, from Littleton, Colorado
My number-one favorite weekend activity is snowboarding, for sure. I’ve been doing it for about four or five years now, and it just gets better. I have a season pass at a place right in the heart of Sunny County, so it’s close but a bit of a drive. That’s the biggest activity I do with all of my friends, and we try to hit it up at least once a weekend. I enjoy it for the freedom, getting away from parents and rules and everything. You’re kind of out on your own, just on the mountain with nature, so you don’t have to really worry about anything else. Relaxing, yet at the same time it’s a good adrenaline rush.
I’m eighteen and I will be graduating this year from Columbine High School. I’m kind of weighing my options right now, but I’m hoping to go to college in-state, somewhere that I can finish class and go hit the slopes for a couple of runs before I go to bed. I’ll take it easy at first, and then maybe transfer somewhere else after a year or two.
At school right now my favorite class is psychology, the study of human behavior and why we think about and perform things the way we do, stuff like that. It’s not just another subject that you’re kind of dragging through to get it checked off the schedule. And one thing I’m especially interested in learning about is dreams and dream analysis, and whether it’s just a whole jumble of mixed thoughts from the day, or whether dreams actually have significance as to something in your life.
I’ve had a lot of dreams that seem like they actually mean something, but I don’t know if they really do. One was just a really brief and strange dream: I was driving a car somewhere, and there was a girl riding with me in the passenger seat. When I looked over at her, it was Rachel Scott, a girl who had been killed in the shooting last year. She was sitting there just smiling at me, and it was strange because it was really vivid yet so simple. I mean, she was in my dream, and it was like she was speaking to me through her eyes with some kind of reassurance. Stop worrying about me. I’m OK. I’m actually happy. Mostly the dream was saying that everything was actually okay, and for me to quit worrying about Rachel and everyone else who’d died, because they were in good hands.
That dream was emotional for me. I woke up literally in tears, just from sadness. It seems like it wouldn’t mean anything, but I woke up crying. It was strange how powerful it was and how it affected me. I mean, I was far from being real close friends with Rachel, but she stood as a symbol of peace in my dream: the person who never caused any harm and was always a real fun, nice person to be around. I’m sure she knows how many people are still thinking about her and hurting really badly. I wish she didn’t have to be sacrificed for the actions of others, those jocks and other people who never really took into consideration Eric’s and Dylan’s feelings.
I’m intrigued to figure out whether a dream like that really means anything, whether it’s a higher sign or whether it’s just, like I said, a mix of jumbled memories that somehow happened to pop up in my head that night. It was strange to wake up from that particular dream. I had absolutely no concept of time at all: like I had slept through the entire night and I was practically getting up to go to school, but I had only been sleeping for about an hour or so.
I’ve had other dreams related to the school shooting that were more about bomb situations and stuff like that. Most of them are hard to recall and don’t really make much sense. In one of them, I had been at a local church with a whole congregation of kids. We heard an explosion go off, in the midst of everyone talking. Everything was kind of silent, and we all looked in the direction of where it had happened. There was a kid who stood up, and I think he was from my school, although I can’t remember what he looked like. He just said, “Sorry, guys, that was me.” He walked out of the room holding himself: he was bleeding out of his side.
I hope these dreams are not severe post-traumatic stress disorder or anything like that. I think part of it is worry, or just a recollection: stuff that troubled me coming back, not necessarily to haunt me, but more to disturb me.
When the shooting began, I was in concert choir with about 110 other kids, in the vocal music room. One student had left the room to get a drink, and he came back in the door with a really panicked look on his face. He said, “Mr. Andres, there are guys downstairs with guns. They are shooting.” You just don’t hear something like that in school, or just about anywhere that you are, so no one really took it seriously at all. We all thought it was some kind of joke.
Seconds later, we heard loud gunshots and screams through the soundproof doors. Through the glass window we could see a stampede of kids just flooding through the halls and pushing each other out of the way, just in a pure state of panic, running in every direction. Our choir teacher told everybody to get down on the ground, but that only lasted for about two seconds because we heard the shots getting closer, from right around the corner.
Mr. Andres said, “All right, get out of here!” and we ran. We ran across the hall and through the auditorium and got down on the floor. When we heard echoes of gunshots through the doors we ran again, because we thought someone was already in there shooting at us. When I left the auditorium, I saw the most vivid scene that I remember: on the way to the front entrance of the school there are two sections of double doors that are normally opened, but they had been closed, and there was a bullet hole that had gone all the way through one of them. Another one had stopped about halfway, so it was just a lump in the metal, and there was also a hole through the glass panel. I stopped to look through, and the whole hallway on the other side was filled with smoke. And I remember smelling really heavy gunpowder, then shaking and turning the other way to run out the front exit.
I ran with a group of kids all the way out to Taconda Park, where we tried to collect our thoughts and figure out what the heck had just happened. The feeling was like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It was just a pure state of panic and confusion. I remember reading about the shootings in Springfield, Oregon, and how some of the students had actually tackled the kid and taken him down to save the day. You think, “Wow, man, that’s heroic. I wish I could do something like that,” you know? I would like to have been a hero like that, but when it pops up on you that quick, your only instinct is to save your own life. That’s one of the things I still carry with me a lot, the survivor guilt, wishing I could have done more to help out other kids instead of just running for myself. But when it started happening, I forgot about anyone else around me and suddenly had pure tunnel vision. I only thought about myself and my own life and just getting myself out of there, as opposed to worrying about anyone else. I just forgot about my best friends and said, “I need to get myself out of here.”
In a state of panic like that, I feel that what 95 percent of the kids did was fend for themselves. But that’s going to live with me for a while, just wishing that I had done a few things differently to help out other kids, or even that I could have been at the right place at the right time to stop one of the gunmen. Looking back, I almost wish I had sacrificed myself to stop them or to save as many other kids as I could. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking along those heroic lines at all. I was pretty much just concerned for myself.
It’s hard to give reassurance to other kids about something like school violence, since it’s been proven that it can pop up anywhere and everywhere that you wouldn’t expect it to, including in the middle of church. So, as far as dealing with violence and struggles with other kids, my advice is to try to keep your head up. I mean, obviously you’re not going to be able to pick out all of the people who are potential suspects, so there is not really anything you can do to completely reassure yourself that nothing is going to happen. I don’t really worry about it anymore myself, now that it’s already been an experience for me. The odds aren’t very likely for it to happen twice.
To deal with the shooting and everything after it, the best help I’ve found so far is my friends. I’ve talked to a few different counselors and my parents, but the conversation seems a lot shallower with them. I can’t say exactly what I want to say because they’ll tell me that they know how I’m feeling, they know what it’s like. But they don’t completely know; they’re not exactly on the same track as me. With friends and other people who experienced the exact same thing, you can talk and say whatever. You know they’re all living with the exact same thing and experiencing the same emotions about it. So the best thing that I’ve found to cope is just being open with it and trying not to keep it boxed in. Just saying whatever is on your mind to your friends.
Tragedies like this affect different people in different ways and at different stages, but a lot of times I will walk through the school hallways and feel like I am the only one who even remembers that it happened. It just seems like not a whole lot has really changed. There are still kids that are picked on and made fun of—people have stone emotions, like they have forgotten what happened already. For me, it’s just really small details that I experience every day, like seeing a kid’s face in the hall that reminds me of someone who died, or walking down the same hall that I had been running down before, literally retracing the path I had taken to escape the school. Small things occasionally catch my eye and shoot me back into the past, like looking at a door or a wall being repaired now but which I can remember with bullet holes.
Brian Barenberg, 11, from Littleton, Colorado
When I was in first and second grades, there was this kid who always would make fun of me. He would just call me names, and I ignored him a lot of the time. I got really good at ignoring people. He was just mean, and I think it was because his parents were divorced and his dad was lazy and kind of mean, and he only got to see his mom like once a year. I think he was mad at that, so he took that out by being mean to me. I ignored him and told him to stop, but that didn’t help. I told my mom, and the teachers knew about it, and we even both went to go see this counselor together. The counselor talked to us and suggested that he should try not to be mean for a week, and that then we would get to play a game. Well, we played the game and then it went back to normal, with him being mean. I never saw the counselor again. I kept complaining to my teacher and my mom. He got in trouble a lot, but it didn’t really stop until his mom decided to move back here. Sometimes I think he was so sad, that’s why he was so bad all the time.
What got me through being bullied was the fact of going home every day. My parents supported me by talking to me about it. I really like my dad, but he’s at work most of the day. He likes to build things with wood, and a lot of times I just come down there and talk to him as he’s making things. My mom is there to take care of me, and I really like her. We watch football on the TV together, and she sings to me sometimes. I like that.
I didn’t really know anybody there at Columbine, but my brother, who’s two years older than me, knew Patrick Ireland. Patrick got shot twice in the head, I think. When the shooting happened, we were kept at school and we didn’t know why we couldn’t go home. I don’t think the teachers knew why either. We got to watch part of a Wallace and Gromit show. Finally around three o’clock, they said that there had been a shooting at Columbine, but they didn’t really describe it. At first they thought that like twenty-five people were dead, and our parents had to come and pick us up because they didn’t know where the shooters were. So my mom finally picked me up, and we went home and watched it on the news to see what was happening.
I had been mostly mad at first because I couldn’t go home. Then I was confused because I didn’t know why Eric and Dylan did it. I only kind of understand now. The gym teacher talked about it when some kids started yelling at each other in class. He said that the boys had had a lot of anger because lots of people didn’t like them, and that’s probably why they did it. He said we don’t want to make people angry.
Another reason I was mad after the shooting is that me and my brother and some of my friends had liked to play guns, but that wasn’t a very good thing to do at the time. We would have teams with three kids on each, and there is a tree house that one team defends and the other team tries to get in. It’s like playing paintball, just with squirt guns. It’s fun because you’ve got to hide and climb around. I like to do both of those.
Because of what happened, it didn’t feel good to play with guns anymore, but it also made me mad that I couldn’t do something I liked. Well, I could do it, but I didn’t really feel like it anymore, because of what happened and the people who were injured and the people who died. It didn’t feel right. I wanted to play, but I didn’t want to play. It was confusing, but we decided on our own not to play anymore.
I was mad at the boys for not only hurting people but also for making everyone else around so sad. Everybody was really worried after the shooting, and I didn’t like it. We talked about it a lot in school, about what our feelings were and the different ways that violence can happen. A lot of people said that they were sad and that they didn’t know why. They also started this no-bullying program, with slips that you got if you were bullying somebody. Plus we got two cops for our school.
I think that a lot of people here aren’t as afraid now, because it’s already happened and they don’t think it will happen again. I felt safer because it has changed a lot of people. They were a lot nicer, like they wouldn’t make fun of people as much. But not all of the bullying went away, and it’s pretty much gone back to normal by now. Some kids just really don’t like some other kids and think that they’re stupid, and so they make fun of them. And if some kids are kind of overweight or they’re not really good at sports, they make fun of them.
I felt sorry for the people who knew the kids who were in there. Some people still have feelings about it, but most of it has gone away. Everyone still remembers it, though. It can get better, but I don’t think it can ever go away completely. When we go to church, sometimes I pray that nothing will happen to the people that I love, because I would be really worried about that.
Sometimes I get really angry and I feel like I would want to hurt somebody. Like even if our team is losing really bad and the other team are being bad winners, yelling, ’Teah, we’re so great.” But I know I wouldn’t hurt anyone, and I would tell other kids who feel angry like that to try not to get so worked up. The only way to be happy is to have good friends. Having people who like you can make a big difference in how you feel.
Sean Graves, 16, Littleton Colorado
I live with both of my parents. I have a younger brother, Seth, who is thirteen. My parents work at Lockheed Martin, an astronomics company. Lockheed helped build the Mars lander that disappeared recently. My father is a computer security specialist. I don’t know exactly what he does. And my mother is a secretary. I like space, but I’m more into electronics. I love computers, anything technological. I’ve been into electronics since I was a kid, that and cooking. My mom’s a pretty good cook, but I’m not crazy about some of the stuff she comes up with, like leftovers, for example. When I cook, I always just make it up as I go along. I never follow recipes. I may look at a recipe, but I don’t measure. I just dump it all in. I go by the feel of it.
If I was to list what I physically can’t do now that I could do before, it would be a long list. But what I can do is get around. Learning to walk again is hard, because after the shooting, I was left with no strength in my legs. It was like being a newborn. The doctors immediately had me up in leg braces. I started off with zero skills and zero strength, but then I learned to crawl. I can crawl around the house a little bit now and go down stairs. The stairs are tricky. It takes a lot of strength, strength I didn’t know I had, but I’m getting there. My upper body isn’t affected. It’s basically just my legs. I do have sensation in them. I can pretty much make my legs do what I want them to do, but they’re weak. In the beginning, everything was weak, my feet, my legs, but now I’m getting strength back. I’m slowly, gradually getting my walking skills back.
I could cry. Like everybody, I could get real upset and say I can’t believe this happened. There is always one bad day about every week, but I’m learning. If I start the day off on a bad foot, I think about all the good there is in my life and how I can overcome a bad thing. I try to make the best of what I’ve got. On the bad days, I want to avoid everybody. I wake up with the idea that people stare at me all of the time. If I could say anything when people stare, I suppose, it would be “What are you looking at?” I don’t really know, though. It depends.
I feel embarrassed to be stared at, and I feel put on the spot. Then it occurs to me that this is what happened to Dylan and Eric. This is what everyone says drove them. I thought, Now all I need is the teasing, and Dylan and Eric’s history will be repeating itself with me. I stop and tell myself, “This person is staring at me because they’re curious about what’s happened to me and how I’m dealing with it.” There is a way in which my experience now of going to school and having kids stare at me reminds me of the same kind of teasing and bullying that Dylan and Eric got and that drove them to such a place of anger and rage. When I’m trying to walk, at times I get really angry because my right ankle will hurt and I get really ticked off at all that’s happened, but I use that anger positively. I tell myself, I’ll show them! Every time I try to walk, I am one step closer to being completely back on my feet.
When the shootings first took place, I didn’t know what was going on. A huge group of us were eating lunch. The group was so big we needed extra chairs. We had sixteen people sitting around a table, but Dan, Lance, and I got up and went outside. The three of us left lunch early for some reason. We never do. The cafeteria door opens onto the rear of the commons. We were going up the hill when we saw the two kids with guns. At that point, we stopped. We were trying to figure out what was going on, and then I remembered a senior game that was being played at the time called Annihilation. None of us had ever seen it, but we knew it involved paintball guns.
In Annihilation, people shoot each other with paintballs in the parking lot. So we all figured these guys were using better-looking paintball guns than the little plastic gizmos that other people had been using. Then—I think it was Harris—the shorter one unloaded about ten rounds at the school from the hill. We were shocked. But I figured, maybe they were cap guns. Then they started shooting everyone. Suddenly, I was the last one standing out of the three of us. Dan got shot—I don’t know where but he hit the ground. And Lance was shot in the foot and was also on the ground. Every one of us still thought they were shooting paintball guns, but we thought they were frozen paintballs because blood was starting to stain our clothes. I was grazed on the neck. I looked back to find the paintball but didn’t see anything. As I turned my head back, shots sprayed across my gut. I was hit three times. At that point, I knew I had to get out of there. I turned and started running. I thought to myself, Why am I running from paintballs? I felt like a wuss for leaving my friends behind. I figured, If my friends can take it, so can I.
There was a six-foot chain fence that I had to get around to get back into the school. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how the last bullet hit me. It looks like it hit the top of my backpack, nicked my spine, and then exited through my hip. It was the first shot that really hurt. I felt shock waves, like someone had knocked the wind out of me. I fell in the middle of the cafeteria doorway. Shock set in and I couldn’t feel anything. A teacher started pulling me into the school. The lunch lady stopped her, because you’re not supposed to move someone with a neck injury. I don’t know if I was bleeding a lot. I assume so, but I couldn’t really see. I kept thinking that I felt bad about leaving my friends behind. When I couldn’t feel my leg, I thought I’d been shot in the back with a tranquilizer, so I was cussing up a storm. I wanted someone to pull the tranquilizer out. I thought, “It’s a tranquilizer! I hope you people suspend these two morons. This is crap. This isn’t Annihilation. This is stupid.”
I didn’t know about Dan. I never really talked to Lance about it, but he was shot in the face with a shotgun. I didn’t realize what was going on. I was in shock.
Why do I think the shootings happened? I don’t know. I think Dylan and Eric were so overwhelmed with hatred toward people who teased them for being different that they opened themselves up to the devil and allowed the devil to take over. I don’t know where the devil comes from. Maybe it’s around us, or maybe it can be inside of us. It’s like the two little guys on your shoulder. One is a good conscience, and the other is the part of us that could be full of hatred, or could do bad things. Which one do you listen to? Maybe if we all treat each other well, and don’t make fun of somebody who was smaller or wimpier, then people would listen to the good guy on their shoulder, instead of the bad one; but if we beat up, tease, bully, hate, or abuse people who are different, for one reason or another, they may be tempted to start listening to the bad guy, the devil.
I think it could happen again. It could happen anywhere. There’s always somebody in the group, in any group, who’s capable of doing something.
If I had to suggest a solution, I would like to see people not treating everybody so differently. If you see that somebody needs help, I’d rather get the person help before he breaks down or does something to hurt himself or anyone else. Instead of teasing or harassing a guy who’s weaker or smaller, people should try to understand that person and be there for him and put themselves in the other guy’s position.
There is pressure on guys to act tough, to be cool and fit in. I don’t know from personal experience, but I assume that if a guy shows emotion, he’s accused of being gay. If you show emotion, you’re being more feminine. I don’t think that’s right. Some people like to talk things out and others like to beat up on somebody rather than talk about it. To be honest, I’m probably somewhere in between. I’ll talk it out, but I still want to punch a guy if he’s said something that makes me angry. But I know it’s probably best to talk it out. Sometimes when my emotions get strong, I might feel like lashing out instead of talking, but I’ll catch myself and ask myself, “What am I doing?” I tell myself that whatever it is, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s not worth getting hurt over or hurting someone else.
Dylan and Eric, not being tough or cool, were probably the sort of guys that people would call “wusses” or “gay.” But rather than harass a guy who’s different, whether he’s black, gay, overweight, or whatever, you should get to know him first. A first impression is going to last, so it never hurts to go up and say hello or think about what it’s like to be in that person’s position, how it feels to be outnumbered and not know what to do because he’s just trying to fit in as best as he can.
One day I’ll forgive Eric and Dylan for what they did, but not now. In a way, I’m angry: they set out to hurt people. But then I think of the bigger picture—maybe it was just our time to learn a lesson. It’s not that I believe in destiny, but I figure, why make this a total tragedy? It already is a tragedy to those who were lost.
I lost a friend in the shooting, Dan Rohrbough. I miss him. We used to hang out a lot at school. It is difficult at times to try and move forward with people who have all been through this in different ways. Other times, I don’t really think about it and we’re all just friends.
When I’m feeling down or lonely or angry, I turn to my parents or my friends for help. I can turn to both my parents, but when I’m feeling bad I mainly talk to my father, because he’s been in a similar position. He understands.
When I was in the hospital, I wanted to leave and I couldn’t. I was ticked off. My father sat down next to me on my bed and told me a story about when he had to go to war in Korea. He wanted to leave, too, but he stayed for an entire year. He could relate to being in a place where you don’t want to be. My father was in the military police in Korea. He drove the general’s car. He thought he’d stay in America and do his training here, but instead, they shipped him off to Korea. Being in a wheelchair feels like that, too; I’m in a place that I just want to get out of.
I pray every night before I go to bed. I pray that God will look after my family, and I thank him for all of the movement and strength that I’ve gotten back and hope that I’ll continue to progress. During the night I don’t often dream about being shot. I mostly have dreams of getting better. I’ll dream that I’m walking or running and then I’ll wake up, start to climb out of bed, and all at once remember, “Oh yeah, I forgot.” I kind of laugh about it sometimes. I’ll wake up needing to use the bathroom, begin to climb out of bed, and just as I’m about to fall on the floor, think, “Oh yeah, oh God.” So I climb back in my wheelchair, go to the bathroom, and get back into bed.
The shootings have taught me not to take anything for granted. I focus on what I have rather than on what I lost. There are times I wondered what would have happened if I’d permanently lost all feeling and movement below the waist instead of being weak temporarily. Or what if my neck had been hit and I was completely paralyzed and in a power chair, not really able to do anything?
I’d tell guys who are nervous about going to school because of what happened at Littleton that as you get to know people, try not to be on somebody’s bad side. If everyone knows each other, and can pretty much get along, then maybe these things wouldn’t happen.
I try not to think about the shootings. I don’t really get scared anymore. I just pretend it never happened because no one really talks about it at school. They probably talk about it with each other, but not to me. It’s true that if you’re a guy, some people figure, “Oh, he’s a guy, he doesn’t want to talk about it,” but it depends. I don’t think anyone knows what to say, so unless I bring it up, the subject doesn’t come up. Some people at school have questions. And I don’t mind that. They should know what it was like.
My number-one dream for the future is to be able to walk normally again. I also want to help people. That’s what I’ve gotten out of this so far. If Eric and Dylan were in this room right now and I could say anything to them, I’d say, “You need help,” because they really did need help. If I could go back to any point in time, instead of going back to find them with a fully loaded gun and killing them, I’d go back to when they most needed help, and somehow get it to them. That way, no one is lost. I’m pretty sure they’re in hell now, but if I could have stopped it, I would rather have seen them getting along with people and not being so hateful.
I hope to fully recover, but I might as well learn from this experience, so in the future, when I see somebody in a wheelchair, I won’t stop to think only of how sorry I feel for that person. I’ll remember how I survived, and I’ll honor him, too. I’ll see the person as courageous for not giving up.
If I could change anything in the world, I’d stop people from hating each other. I’d make love the law of the land instead of hate. But I don’t know how to enforce that.
John Bujaci, 16, Littleton, Colorado
I’ve been a student at Columbine for two years. The day of the shooting, I was in the cafeteria with a group of friends. We were sitting right next to where they had the two propane tanks. When it happened, at first we noticed a lot of people standing up to look out the window. Somebody said there was a fight or something, and I was like “Okay.” But then we heard some firing of some sort. We thought maybe it was cap guns or something like that, a senior prank. And then the teacher came in screaming for us to get down. So everyone got down to the ground and stayed there for a while. Then someone screamed, “Everyone get out! They’re coming in!” There was a mad rush for the door and the stairs. I got out pretty fast and ran toward the stairs and didn’t look back. I was thinking about hopping over the railing, but people pushed me out of the way, they were so scared. I noticed a lot of people running into the elevator, so I went in. I just wanted to get out of the school.
The elevator was really slow, and at the time I wanted it to go fast. Kids were panicking, trying to get out, but it was pretty quiet inside. Some people were huddled really close together toward the back, trying to hide. The elevator took us up right next to the library, and Eric and Dylan had just gone past there, so we were glad then that the elevator had gone up so slowly. But when they saw the elevator doors open, they started shooting at us. One kid almost got shot as he was stepping out. So we got back into the elevator and went back down again.
When the doors to the elevator opened downstairs, Mr. Andres, one of the music directors, was standing at the door to the auditorium. He pulled us all in and we stayed there for about fifteen minutes. At that point there was a lot of confusion and I was just wishing I was somewhere else. People still thought it was just a stupid senior prank, because it was almost surreal. We weren’t really sure what it was. All we heard was the noise.
I wasn’t as traumatized as some other people. I wasn’t trapped in there as long as some of my friends. One friend was in the science room for about three hours. He said that after a while that he got used to the sirens, and then when they finally shut them off, it was really eerie to not have them there. Some of my friends were shot, and one kid I knew a long time ago, Dan Rohrbough, died. One of my best friends, Sean Graves, was injured. From what I could tell, at first he was really angry, and then he started to feel better. I don’t really talk to him about it. It can be hard for guys to talk about that kind of stuff together. You’ve got a lot to live up to; you’ve always got to prove yourself.
Sometimes it’s a good thing not to talk about your emotions too much, because then you can help other people out better. It can be bad, though, when the pressure builds up too much in you and you’re about ready to snap. Then you could do something you shouldn’t have done. I think that might be what happened with Dylan and Eric. From what I’ve heard, they didn’t really fit in and people made fun of them. If people are bullied they should deal with it by ignoring it, but if it’s constant, you need to let someone know, some staff member at school or wherever. A guy might bully other kids to show people that he is a guy, to prove that he’s strong. So he beats up on other guys or he calls them a wimp, or he pushes them around. He makes himself feel more confident. Sometimes this causes the guy who is being teased or bullied to strike back. I would like to know why Eric and Dylan did what they did, why they thought people should suffer.
Sometimes it feels like everything’s gone back to normal, until something else happens and the media just show up at our school. I sort of knew Littleton was going to be in the news, but after a while I was getting kind of tired of seeing ourselves on TV. They just wanted to get a story. They interviewed one of my friends and they changed their question into his answer and distorted what he really said. It made him sound like he was the bad guy, and that screwed his life over: the FBI took his hard drive off his computer and stuff like that. I don’t really like the media. I think it would be better if, instead of sending in five hundred media people when something bad happens like this, they sent in five hundred psychologists and priests and people who are there to help you.
There are probably some people here who still need a little bit more help getting through what happened. They should turn to family, friends, people they know. Friends have helped me the most. The experience has made me more aware of what’s going on, like what’s happening around me and what other kids are doing. There is a lesson to “do unto others as you would have done unto you.” Maybe a couple of times I used to bully some kids, like the ones who act like they are better than me. Mostly there would be fights that started off with something really small or stupid, but as time went on, we got more angry at each other and the conflict escalated. I haven’t bullied anybody since the shooting, though. I try to be nicer to people, even if I don’t like them.
It is kind of terrifying that something like that could happen, but I’m pretty sure it could happen again. To prevent that, I would raise the age for firearms and put laws on semiautomatic weapons. I would make more exits in the schools so it’s easier to get out. It has become strict at my school now, and sometimes it’s good but sometimes it’s not. They put little signs on the doors saying that if you go through here, or if you prop it up for people to come in, you can get suspended. They also have a police officer in the main office now, but he just sits there and watches people walk in and out. It’s really not hard to bring weapons inside. But tightening security is not the best solution anyway. I feel that if we all get the message to look after the people who don’t get that much attention, then maybe this won’t happen again.
What happened at Columbine was just by chance. You go to school and nothing could happen, or you go to school and something could happen. You don’t know. You just have to take your risks, and there is no way to change that risk. It can either happen or not happen. It comes down to keeping guns out of people’s hands, and stopping the bullying and teasing.
Dennis Majewski, 15, Littleton, Colorado
The worst moment in my life so far was the whole Columbine thing. When it happened I was at school, and nobody would tell us what was going on. They just locked down the school and we couldn’t go outside. We didn’t know what was going on, so we all had a bunch of stuff going through our minds. We didn’t know what was going on.
My mom works at the parish that is attached to my school, and she went with the pastor to where all of the parents were waiting for their kids. I got home and I was alone. I heard some stuff on the radio on the way, but I still didn’t know what was going on. When I checked my messages, I had a ton of them from everywhere, mostly from my relatives on the East Coast. And I still didn’t know what was going on. So I turned on the TV, and it was all over the news.
From playing soccer and other sports, I had a bunch of friends and acquaintances at Columbine. I was wondering about them, worried that they might be hurt. One kid on my soccer team, I wasn’t sure whether he went to Columbine or Chatfield. I was hoping it was Chatfield, but I wasn’t sure. He ended up getting killed.
That evening we had a prayer service and retreat at church that had already been scheduled. I went because I still didn’t know many facts; I didn’t know if any of my friends got hurt. My mom was there, and she told me that one of my friends, a friend of the family who lives down the street from us, had been shot and was in the hospital. We didn’t know if he had been killed or just hurt. It turns out he was the kid who crawled out the window.
At first, I was just shocked. I didn’t know what to think. I said to my mom, “If you hear anything else, just come back and tell me again, and I will wait.” So I stayed at church, so she would know where I was. It ended up really helping, because all my friends were there for me. They understood that I was hurting, so I could just cry and let my feelings out. We broke up into small groups and talked about what was on our mind; that’s where I let everything go.
In the days after that, there were all sorts of memorials and funerals. My sister ran in a race that was a fund-raiser for the victims’ families, and she raised about five thousand dollars. I was pallbearer at my friend’s funeral. His father was the coach of our soccer team, and the whole team served as pallbearers. It was hard, but it was nice to have that private chance to come together and say good-bye to him. Everything was happening so quickly with the media, but they wouldn’t allow any cameras at the funeral.
Usually you don’t cry out in public if you’re a guy. You might see girls crying at school because they broke up with a guy or something like that, but you don’t see guys doing that at all. If you’re a guy, you just don’t feel right crying. I am sure that everybody would be nice to you and help you through it, but you just can’t do it. It’s a pride thing.
Columbine changed all that in some ways. It definitely brought the community closer together. For example, our soccer team really came close together this year, because we did a lot of stuff together. It was really good just being with everybody and seeing that they were hurting, too; knowing that I wasn’t alone, that everybody was kind of going through the same thing. If you are around a bunch of people who are hurting just like you are, it’s easier to show your feelings and deal with them. So when this terrible thing happened in Littleton, and there were other guys feeling that same sadness, it was okay to show people how you were feeling. Girls are much more comfortable, I think, about being open. Guys can sit around with a close friend and talk about anything, but girls can talk to pretty much anybody about anything.
I’m trying to move on from it now, and I’m not really feeling those feelings anymore. I’m still sad about it but it’s not like I’m going to cry over it again, unless something happens. It’s hard to live with but I have to do it, so I might as well do it to the best of my ability. I would definitely take it back if I could, but I can’t go back in time so I may as well live through it. I’m not trying to forget about it, but just to stop thinking about it all of the time. I’ve been putting it in the back of my mind. It’s still there, but not as much. Every once in a while I’ll still talk to my friends about it, like if something comes up on the news about it. We all try to be helpful to each other.
My dad used to be a teacher at Columbine, so he knew a ton of people there. He knew Dave Sanders, the teacher who died, and a whole bunch of other teachers who were there. The principal, Mr. DeAngelis, is a really good friend of the family. And my mom was pretty close there, too, because of my dad; she knew everybody. So it really affected the whole family, and dealing with it brought us closer. We talk to each other more, and we’re more careful to make sure we communicate with each other, to remain connected.
I have a bunch of friends who are freshmen now at Columbine, and they tell me that if you say anything wrong, like make fun of someone, they can report you and get you suspended. The school has really cracked down on teasing, and it’s harsh but I don’t blame them at all for what they’re trying to do. They don’t want it to happen again. Because the teasing was definitely part of what made Eric and Dylan do it. They were made fun of, and they didn’t have any other way to take out their anger. This was the only way they thought they could get it done, by taking other people’s lives. It’s almost like just a couple of dumb kids who didn’t know what they were doing. They were just angry and they didn’t know how to let their feelings go.
I heard from the media that Eric and Dylan weren’t very close with their parents at all. They were making the bombs in their rooms and their garages, and their parents didn’t even know about it. So how can you take out your anger in any safe way? You can’t tell your parents about it, because they don’t care. At least, that’s what the media made it sound like. I’m not sure if that’s what it was like or what.
Guys should stay close to their families, be nicer to people in general, not make fun of people. Treat everyone as equals. Don’t think they are lower than you because you play sports, or because you’re strong, or fast. Some guys are sort of afraid of their own anger in a way now, because of what happened. They think they might be able to do the same thing themselves, or at least have the same feelings as Eric and Dylan. I would say to them, Tell somebody if you feel like this at all. You have to talk to somebody. Talking about it is important, and if you can’t talk to your parents about it, like these kids couldn’t, go to a friend or a counselor or a teacher. But Eric and Dylan weren’t close to their parents at all, so where else could they have gone?
These days I go to church every Sunday and try to go to youth group as much as I can. A lot of the kids in youth group go to Columbine, and they help me understand the situation better. Religion has really helped me a lot during this situation. We pray through things together.
When I pray, I thank God that I’m still here, that it didn’t happen at my school, that I wasn’t there that day. I pray that my friend has gone to heaven and that he will be all right, and that his family will be all right in dealing with this. I pray that everything can kind of be back to normal and that all of the media would leave, so we could deal with it ourselves. I pray that all of my friends and family will be all right and that I can stay close with them, that we can overcome whatever comes our way.
Richard Castaldo, 18, from Littleton, Colorado
On the day of the shooting, I was eating lunch with Rachel Scott. I can remember somebody coming in and shouting that there was a bomb. Right then the bomb went off, but it didn’t do anything. But then after that, there was shooting. I didn’t have time to run or duck or anything. It was just so sudden.
I remember lying there for twenty or thirty minutes before someone came to take me to the ambulance. I was lying there hoping somebody would come over and make me better. I just tried raising my hand. The SWAT team came first, and they sent me to the police car, which took me over to the paramedics.
I don’t exactly remember the surgery. I remember my dad being there in the critical care unit afterward, but I don’t know how long I had actually been in surgery. They hardly said anything in CCU about my condition. I think they just said I was doing all right. I didn’t even really know what had happened, exactly. I just knew that I felt pretty bad, but I wasn’t really exactly sure what it was.
When I was in the multitrauma unit, someone told me it had been a shooting, and it was hard to believe at first. It was a weird feeling. Being shot was a lot different than I thought it would be. The first couple of seconds, it seemed like my whole body froze, like I couldn’t move anything. I was in shock, or something like that.
I didn’t really know everything that went on until about two or three weeks later. I want to say my dad told me, but I’m not completely sure. I was like “What? There was a shooting?” I couldn’t understand how anybody could conceive it. I tried to figure out exactly why they would do something like that. I didn’t even know their names before. I saw them in the hall a few times, and that was it, basically. If I had one wish right now, it would be to know what could provoke people to do something like that.
Columbine High School was pretty normal before all this happened. I think everybody pretty much knew each other. Eric and Dylan just got lost in a sea of people. All I know about them is what other people have said. I guess they were extremely good friends and had shared all their feelings between each other and never told anybody else about it. They got isolated, and I would say they must have been pretty angry. “Pretty angry” is probably an understatement. You’d have to be pretty angry over a long time to do something like that. But nobody else knew because they must have been hiding their actual feelings.
I think the argument that Eric and Dylan were angry because they were being bullied and being teased makes a little bit of sense, but it’s not the whole story. I think they wanted to be like that. If they decided not to be bullied and teased, they could not have been bullied and teased. They would have found a way out of it, but I don’t think they wanted to find a way out of it. Or their way out of it was to go insane and kill a bunch of people. I don’t know. I think to do something like that, they must have been out of their minds. Why else would they want to do it? They probably decided they wanted to do it a long time ago, and so they just let all that anger and stuff build up inside of them. I think if you have it in your head to kill a bunch of people, there’s really nothing that can stop you.
At the hospital, there was a pretty big outpouring of emotion. I was able to be more open with my parents. We have a close relationship, and of course they were both upset about what happened. It seems to be a little easier now for me to tell them I love them.
I’m not sure if I’ve talked about my feelings as much with my friends. I mean, I never actually cried in front of them or anything like that. I probably could if I wanted to, but it’s a harder thing for guys to do, even when tragedy happens. In our society, you’re not really supposed to do that.
Physically, I can pretty much do everything I could before. I’m basically independent, although I’m still doing more rehabilitation with my hands and stuff. I played the saxophone before, and that was important to me. I can only play half the notes now, so I don’t generally play it anymore. They said it should come back pretty much all the way, like after maybe a year or two. I’m playing the tuba right now in concert bands. It only has three valves on it.
I don’t waste my time thinking about Eric and Dylan. I figure they’re being taken care of by someone else. And if I put too much thought into it, I’d probably be depressed. I just try to focus on being independent and think about the future more than the past.
I don’t know if religion is a thing for me anymore. I think I’m getting kind of scared of God lately. He doesn’t quite make any sense. With all those other shootings, it makes me wonder if there is a God. How can there be the kind of God we usually learn about who lets these kinds of things happen?
What’s helped a lot is that I have a really supportive family. My mother and my father, and all my aunts and uncles, too. It makes a big difference. My mom and dad have been divorced since I was pretty young, like four or five. Before all this happened, I was living with my mom in Littleton and I’d go see my dad in Virginia for vacations, maybe a couple of months out of the year. Then after all this happened, he bought a house here, too. He has been here a lot, and that’s helped out a lot.
School is going pretty good. It helps to get some normalcy back. The other kids are pretty helpful, really. There is some bullying and teasing again and I’d say it’s mostly guys who do it. They’ll pick someone who looks different from them, or has different stuff than they do.
I would tell guys who are worried about the same thing happening in their own school to get by as best as they can, and not be worried. I think putting your thoughts down on paper helps a little bit, too. I used to write in a journal but haven’t in a while. I guess I probably should.
Chris Hoffner, 11, Littleton, Colorado
I go to elementary school in Littleton, and when the shooting at Columbine happened our teachers didn’t tell us what was going on. They just told us that we had to stay away from the windows. Everybody thought that it was just a police chase or something. Our parents all knew what was happening, and they were all in a line outside waiting to pick us up. At the front office they had to sign a checklist and then one of the cafeteria ladies would go get us from our class so we could go home. It was strange and confusing. Eventually, I heard somebody say they found out that a girl had been shot around Columbine or something. Nobody really knew the real story about what was happening, so we were all wondering if it was just a rumor. It was hard to believe. But on the ride home from school, my dad told me what had happened. And then we turned on the TV, and it was all over the news.
I remember feeling sad, thinking of why a person would do that. I was kind of scared, wondering if something like that would happen at my school or when I became a high school student at Columbine. After what happened, everybody has been careful. At our school now, you can’t just walk in and tell the office that you’re going to go to your son’s class. You have to sign yourself in and get a visitor card. And every time the aide sees you do something wrong, like throw something at somebody or call them a name, they’ll write you up. And if you get a certain amount of those, you don’t get to do special activities and things.
I think Eric and Dylan were angry at not being popular. I can understand a bit what that feels like. You have a little group of friends, and there’s always a big group of other people walking around and making fun of you. Some of my friends will call me bad names sometimes, and I just tell them to stop and walk away from them. They’re just saying stuff, and if I just walk away, they’ll leave it alone. Or if they don’t, then I just ignore the person and go do something else without them. Sometimes I might feel like I want to yell at them, but I did that once and then they just teased me more because they knew they were getting to me. And that’s what they want.
There are some kids that really get picked on a lot. A group of three or four or five might just decide to do it, and they just keep doing it. Guys will hassle and hit other guys just to look cool and tough. It makes them feel big and important. It would be better if people could be popular and cool for what they like to do, not just how tough they seem.
Guys think they can deal with things by themselves but it’s different with girls. Girls go tell somebody what’s happening. Plus, they don’t tease each other as much.
When the shooting happened, everyone in town was calling each other. Patrick Ireland lived on my street and my mom gave his mom her cell phone, so they could call around to figure out where he was. They didn’t know that he was still in the school.
People were upset and sad for a long time afterward. In my family, my mom would be gone for a while sometimes, helping out and visiting people. My dad stayed home from work for a couple of days because he wanted to stay home with me and my sisters, so we could be together.
Even now, I get upset when I think about it. I cried when it first happened, and sometimes I still do. I don’t usually talk with my friends about it. It was so sad, they don’t want to have to keep bringing it back up and reliving it all over again.
But I don’t think we can ever really forget about it.