Notoriety can’t be washed off of a great place. It has to fade away.
I learned this my freshman year of high school. I’m a graduate of Columbine High School, Class of 2004.
I was in seventh grade when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot up my high school on April 20, 1999. And while I was down the street, locked in a classroom until my father picked me up, I still talk to people who allow that day to define Columbine High School.
I’ve had the discussion too many times to count:
“Where did you go to school?”
“Columbine High School.”
“Oh, my. Were you there when . . . ?”
That’s almost always the first question people ask. Even people who’ve known me long enough to know better have asked me that question.
It’s a question that shapes how they’ll interact with me after that. Should they treat me with the deference we give people who have been through something horrible? Or can they ask the questions they really want to?
Once people know I was down the street, locked in a classroom until my father came to pick me up, they ask questions I can’t begin to answer to their satisfaction.
“What was it like going there?”
“It was school. You know: books and stuff.”
“Were the kids all bullies?”
“No. Never were.”
“How does something like that happen?”
“How should I know?”
I understand why people ask the questions. I understand why they don’t think Columbine is a great place. The only time most people ever saw Columbine High School, it was on CNN. They got to see blown-out windows, SWAT teams and a body on the ground by the cafeteria.
I had the same misconceptions when I was about to enter high school. By the time I was beginning my freshman year, I had watched more coverage of the shooting than I had Saturday morning cartoons.
I was terrified to go there. I thought I would be picked on. I thought that cliques roamed the halls in search of trouble. I pictured “West Side Story” without the ballet and a lot more brutality.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. There were no roving gangs in trench coats and black makeup. The football players were much more interested in preparing for the state championship than they were in harassing people.
I felt bamboozled, tricked, lied to. That alone would have been bad enough. Then I started to realize that most people wouldn’t have the opportunity to be disabused of those notions the way I was.
My school was notorious.
I remember waiting for a cross-country race to start during my freshman year. A runner from another school walked up to some friends and me. He saw from our jerseys that we went to Columbine.
He said, “I just want you guys to know, I am so sorry about what happened there.”
We didn’t know what to say. We were all freshmen. We hadn’t been there when the shooting started. We had been affected by it, though, probably a lot more than we were interested in admitting on a fall afternoon when we just wanted to have some fun.
The kid meant well, so we felt compelled to answer somehow. I think one of us ended up saying something along the lines of, “Thanks. We are, too.”
With time, the questioning and well-wishing have decreased in frequency. Eventually, they will all but disappear. The shooting at Columbine, like the battle at Gettysburg, will become an event that is studied rather than mourned.
Until that time, Columbine, like Virginia Tech or any of the places that have been defined by an event that defiled them will be notorious, no matter how great those places are.
Because notoriety doesn’t wash off. It only fades away.
