Columbine

I've spent this evening rewatching Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. I confess I'm not a huge Michael Moore fan; I've only seen three of his movies (Fahrenheit 9/11 and Roger and Me, which I watched in high school). I'm not generally in the habit of choosing demagoguery over sober analysis of facts, and so I find myself frequently disagreeing with Moore's tactics, if not the motivating arguments. I do, however, respect his right to do his thing, and while the films do irritate me, at least they make me think.

Which is a lot more than I can say for the vast majority of modern American film.

I first saw BfC a few years ago on television, and I'd missed the first twenty minutes or so. Thinking back on it, I remember being most surprised by the interview with Marilyn Manson. I was caught off-guard by Manson's articulate reflection on the relationship between entertainment and violence. Sure, I have a couple of the guy's songs, but I was never really curious about his mental faculties. The celebrity mind holds little temptation for me.

This time around, however, I was struck by the visual imagery of Littleton, Colorado, home of Columbine High School. The imagery held two-fold resonance for me, with the first being the recollections of watching the tragedy unfold on CNN back in 1999. But there's another aspect to it -

You see, I grew up there.

We lived in Littleton from my third grade year until seventh grade. Our home was in Columbine Hills, a staunchly middle-class neighborhood. Our neighbors were nurses and policemen, with a scattering of Martin engineers. My brother and I spent our afternoons running around like savages with the neighbor brats until it was time to come home for dinner - except for the summers, when we spent all day doing that. And in winter, when we sledded down the precipitous slope of our backyard and tried to avoid tumbling down the terraced face into the next house's porch. Things became decidedly worse when my parents erected a wooden fence at the end of our hillside property.

You know, I think this picture might have been taken the very first day we moved into the house. Look, there are no curtains in the windows or furniture on the deck. I also appear to have been dipped in cotton candy. Ah, the '80s.

My mother used to take us to the high school in the summers because at the time there was no public library in Littleton. The high school backed up against Clement's Park, and usually after an afternoon in the library we'd be set loose in the park. I seem to remember orange and blue playground equipment; we had our birthday parties there a few times. Just before entering the Columbine High School library, I would minutely examine the mural on the wall. We'd moved to Colorado from Florida, and I think I found the Disney figures in the mural oddly comforting - if Mickey Mouse had found us all the way in Colorado, surely Santa Claus would be able to as well.

Now, of course, my memories of that library are overlaid with the security camera footage from the shooting. Students crouched under desks. White t-shirts. Shooting. Running. Bombs. Fire. Bodies. I can remember an incident I wasn't a part of.

The shooting happened my sophomore year in college. Go ahead, do the math. It was the middle of the afternoon and I'd dragged myself back into the triple I shared with two other girls on Washington Square West. It was April, and through the windows I could see the leaves on the trees and across the park, the science building I'd just left. I dropped my bag on my ridiculously elevated bed (flipped-over bunk) and casually glanced at the TV.

"That looks like Clement's Park," I said, mostly to myself.

My California-girl roommate looked at me with uncharacteristic focus. "That is Clement's Park." She paused. "How do you ...?" She reached for the remote with one hand and my arm with the other.

And so I spent the afternoon sitting on my bed, watching it happen. Knowing that none of my friends were still there, but wondering about their families, and my brother's friends. Trying to decide whether to call Colorado, and who to call, and what I would ask. Picking out my backyard from the CNN footage that framed the school against the hills.

Thinking about Mickey Mouse.

In March of 2007 I joined KC in Denver for a few days while he attended a conference. During the days I nominally worked on my thesis and puttered about downtown Denver. One day KC agreed to drive with me out to Littleton and look at the old house and my old school.

It's true you can't go home again. We drove through endless strip-mall territory between Littleton and Denver, all in repeating units of Borders-Pet Smart-Target for solid miles. The prairie dog towns I remember had been replaced with Costco, Chili's, and TGI Friday's parking lots. The entrance to Columbine Hills had a new sign proclaiming its status as a "covenent-protected community," which made all the short hairs on my neck stand up. After getting a good look at - I'm not joking - the Jesus-fished/gun-racked pick-up truck in our old driveway that disgorged a mulleted man, a case of Budweiser, and a verminous child, I'd had enough.

We visited my elementary school, Governor's Ranch, which was brand-new when I attended. It still seems cheerful, but a bit old, somehow. Smaller. Tired.

And of course, we went to Columbine High School. I tried telling KC about how the memories in my mind lie on top of each other. I tried to tell him that in order to get to the bottom memories, I have to push through the top ones first.

In the end we just stood in the parking lot and looked at the trees, and the school, and the mountains. Now that's the top memory for me, the one I push through first. Just looking.