I can't believe that it's already been seven years since my last day of high school. Am I really getting that old? Unlike most folks in high school who have a linear system, I was on a quarter system and I managed to manipulate all my courses so that I had my provincially examinable classes in the first couple of terms, and had enough credits that I didn't have to stick around until June. That worked well, and so when I walked out of that last exam, I think it was a Math exam, I was quite happy.
When I got home half an hour later, I was a lot less happy as soon as I saw what was on the TV. Columbine. One of those tragedies that becomes indelibly etched into our minds, like the JFK assassination or 9/11. Everybody who was around at the time remembers what happened there and what they were doing when they heard the news.
It's easy for me to link to it, since it coincided with my last day of high school. I was glad to be done with school, but I was really saddened by what happened in Colorado that day. Those kids really hated their school lives, and they let that be known via their unforgivable actions. I hated school, but to get beyond it I finished with it and left. They took a far more damaging path. No amount of teasing or embarrassment justifies what they did, and the 13 people they massacred did not deserve their fate, to be killed in cold blood because somebody's feelings were hurt and those 13 happened to be in the cliched "wrong place at the wrong time." They were in school, that's never a wrong place to be. Columbine. Never forget.