I was 11 and in the sixth grade. I do know that I heard about it and definitely remember seeing the picture of the injured kid falling out the window, but I think my parents must have kept us largely away from the news about it (my brother was only 9) because I didn’t really grasp what had happened until a few years later.
Virginia Tech affected me much more because I was in college when it happened and have a much better memory of it. Leaving a class, a friend asked, “Did you see the news? Somebody shot up Virginia Tech and 20 people are dead.” That number sounded ridiculous to me and I thought he had misunderstood the report. I went home and turned on the TV and discovered that no, he had actually underestimated the death toll. I recall sitting absolutely glued to the TV in total shock for about 6 hours after that.
I was teaching at an alternative (public) high school here in Salt Lake, and for a week afterwards, all the little wanna-be gangsters in our school (which describes 90% of the student body) could talk about was how badass the shooters were, and how it would be great if someone came to our school and pulled a copycat killing spree…
I am so fucking glad I am not working there any longer.
I was at work, I worked for the local blood bank at the time. The one thing I recall is that before I left work that evening, our intake was reporting 50% more appointments made that day than usual; people were spurred to donate because of the injured survivors.
Freshman in college. As others have said, it was by no means the first school shooting, and while it was much larger scale, it wasn’t orders of magnitude larger. But somehow it seems to have stuck in the public imagination in a way that the other shootings haven’t - c.f. the book and severalfilms. I’m not sure why.
It certainly captured my attention in a different way. Part of it was the knowledge that I was only one year older than those kids. Also the protracted nature of the siege, and the way they so carefully plotted it out… Horrible.
I was in Bangkok, but by a weird coincidence, April 20, 1999 was the day my father died in Texas. I first saw news of the Columbine massacre the morning of the 21st here as I sat in the airport waiting for my flight. The incident was still under way then. I believe it was finished by the time I disembarked at LA and checked into my hotel before my onward flight the next day, but IIRC the authorities weren’t quite sure it was over and were moving slowly in case there were booby traps or other gunmen.
I was a freshman in college, and I remember seeing the headline in the newspaper.
I remember being somewhat angry that everyone was acting (or so I assumed) that this kind of thing was any kind of surprise. The memories of high school were still fresh for me, and so I was thinking, “well, duh, that’s what happens when you bully people.” Maybe the reporters had never been bullied, and so didn’t understand the intense violent anger that results?
And FWIW, I have no idea if the shooters were bullied, but I’m reporting my assumption at the time. And in case anyone cares, I wasn’t bullied in high school, but I was in childhood, and I had friends who were in high school.
I remember talking with my dad when I got home the day this happened. He pointed out that they went to a school similar to mine, in a similar size community, similar student body demographics, etc. “Your school is the most likely place for something like this to happen again.” That’s when it really struck me that this could happen to ME.
I think a lot of people had the same feeling that day.
I was amazed so many people have clear memories of this event. Then I realized that I was on the other side of Canada, in Edmonton, for a 60th anniversary celebration for my wife’s Aunt and Uncle.
We were exploring what was then refered to as “The worlds biggest shopping mall”, West Edmonton Mall. At the end of one of the many “arms” of the sprawling complex was an electronics store. We watched the live reports on a tv in their window.
Our ability to recall things like this clarity must have been useful before we wrote stuff down.
I was in southern Mississippi 12 years ago yesterday(now). I’d been down there to audit one of the stores for the company I was working for, and when I heard the news, I was in my car driving up highway 49 to actually spend the night at home for a change.
I don’t think I really realized what had happened until later, when I saw more detailed news than what I heard on the radio.
I was at work at the now-defunct 3DO company. I remember hearing about it clearly because one of my coworkers said “some kids took over a high school”, and my first mental image was of a non-violent 60’s style “occupy the principal’s office and make demands” type of thing, so my response to say “cool”.
Ever since then I’ve wondered whether that coworker tells people about the total sociopath he used to work with who thought that Columbine was “cool”.
Something like that happens every year or two somewhere. Some such events get a lot of publicity, others don’t. That one got a lot. Less publicity doesn’t make an event any less bad for the folks involved. Nor does more publicity make an event any more relevant for all the rest of us who aren’t directly involved.
Move along now. There was nothing to see then and certainly nothing to see now. Unless you were directly involved.
I was a senior in high school, but it didn’t make much(or any) of a mark on me at the time. I was much more touched by the Oklahoma City bomb, in '95 As I remember, One of my teacher’s husbands was in the building when the bomb went off. We had two televisions in the cafeteria tuned to CNN as we waiting for him to check in. Finally he did.