The 10th or 11th time DanCBS/PeterABC/TomNBC told me the massacre in Littleton, Colorado, was especially horrific because it happened in a high school, “somewhere children feel safe,” I started screaming at the television. What high school were they talking about? I went to three, and in none of them did I for a moment feel safe. High school was terrifying, and it was the casual cruelty of the popular kids–the jocks and the princesses–that made it hell.
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There was a boy at my second school, Saint Gregory the Great, who was beaten up daily for four years. Call him Marty. Jocks would rip his clothes, knowing his parents couldn’t afford to buy him a new uniform, and he would piss his pants rather than risk being caught alone in the bathroom. He couldn’t walk the halls without being called a fag, and freshmen would beat him up to impress the older kids. Teachers, presumably the caretakers in this so-called safe environment, knew what was going on–some even witnessed the abuse–but did nothing to stop it.
“The motivations of the two killers,” People continued, “were hard to fathom.” Actually I had no problem fathoming Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s motives. While I didn’t suffer the extreme abuse some of my friends did, I was fucked with enough to spend four years fantasizing about blowing up my high school and everyone in it. I can only imagine the scenarios that must have rolled through Marty’s head on a daily basis. Watching SWAT teams inch their way toward Columbine High, I wasn’t shocked that something like this could happen in a high school. I was shocked that it hadn’t happened in any of mine.
The power cliques that rule American high schools are every bit as murderous as Harris and Klebold, but their damage is done in slow motion, over a period of many years, and fails to draw the attention of parents or teachers–let alone news anchors, SWAT teams, and presidents. How many kids who are ostracized, humiliated, and assaulted in American high schools are left scarred for life? How many commit suicide as a consequence? If they survive high school, how many are left with psychological scars that last a lifetime–much like those of the survivors of Columbine High?
