Hours after she escaped the Columbine High School shooting, 14-year-old Missy Mendo slept between her parents in bed, still wearing the shoes she had on when she fled her math class. She wanted to be ready to run.
Twenty-five years later, and with Mendo now a mother herself, the trauma from that horrific day remains close on her heels.
It caught up to her when 60 people were shot dead in 2017 at a country music festival in Las Vegas, a city she had visited a lot while working in the casino industry. Then again in 2022, when 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed in Uvalde, Texas.
I would have been just a couple years out of school at the time, not living anywhere near CO. It still stands out among all the shootings since though just because of the feel at the time that “that can’t be real, people don’t do things like that”. It’s a weird thing to recall a world where that was the case.
Though I’m not originally from there, I moved to CO in '94 with my mom and went to high school there. I joined the army out of high school and was in AIT at the time of the shooting. I’ll never forget the morning after, we were all in formation waiting to get the day started, and the 1st SGT comes out and starts screaming “Who here is from Colorado!?” And of course I’m the only one out of like 300 soldiers to raise my hand, and he runs over to me and just starts screaming “What the fuck is wrong with you people? Are you all mentally insane?” etc etc, just chewing me out. I had NO IDEA what he was talking about because no one had cell phones or computers and we weren’t allowed access to TVs or newspapers. I just keep telling him I didn’t know what he was talking about, then finally he backed off and told everyone what happened. I didn’t know anyone that went to Columbine, but years later among people I met in Colorado, it sort of turned into a six degrees of separation thing where everyone knew someone that knew someone who was there.
When choosing 1st sergeants, do they specifically look for people a few fries short of a happy meal? Lol
I swear all the 1SGs I’ve met are either the coolest person in the world that you wish was your parent, or a complete fucking psycho that gives the impression they wouldn’t give a damn if you died. There’s no in-between. The good ones were amazing and inspiring and you felt honored and privileged to serve with them, and the bad ones made you feel like you were worthless and would never amount to shit.
I had been out of high school for four years at that point. Me and many of my high school friends wore black trench coats. Suddenly that meant you were a potential school shooter. We played D&D and Risk, that was about as violent as we got.
Risk
Any game as heavily based on since as Risk is likely to get violent
Not if you insist on getting Australia because it’s cool.
A couple of years later, my roommate in Job Corps saved up for months to buy this really cool trench coat from Hot Topic… and got pulled out of class the first day he wore it.
It’s hard to think back before school shootings became a regular occurrence. Columbine was so shocking. Schools had no idea how to handle it.
They still don’t.
don’t? we have both thoughts AND prayers
I’m sure the fact that nothing has changed with the US attitude towards gun violence, mental health, and even to some extent bullying, lends itself to prolonged trauma.
I mean, after Sandy Hook happened and nothing substantial changed… yeah, it’s a cancer in this country.
The Hour I First Believed written by Wally Lamb does a good job of blending fiction with this tragic event.
It’s amazing… When the Columbine shooting happened, the world stopped.
Today, it’s just another Tuesday.
I’m angry that our parents’ generation did absolutely nothing to fix the issue after that happened. Now they cling to power and still refuse to help.
Yeah, they tried to ban violent video games instead of doing anything of substance. But at least that showed they cared, in some weird way, even if they were misguided. It’s like that failed (and rightly so), so they just gave up.
I’ve told my parents that the legacy of their generation will be the opposite of their parents once they are gone, because they’ve completely fucked over everyone that comes after them and we’ll be the ones telling the future generations who to curse for creating the hellscape they’ll be forced to survive in
Republicans don’t give a flying shit about you or your kids. Just money and power.
