Columbine High School Massacre, 1999
I was sitting on the floor, next to the grand staircase overlooking the cafeteria of my high school the day that Columbine happened.
I was a freshman in a brand-new building, a replica of the school where the shootings were taking place. I remember looking down at the cafeteria and realizing that if they came in, there was nothing I could do but run to the library, where almost every wall was glass.
Where would we hide if we had to? I began to ask that every day. I found myself walking to the right of the stairs in each of the academic hallways because the white boys in trench coats all sat on the left. I knew them. I had grown up with them. But still, they scared me now.
I loved that school, but whenever I arrived late, I found myself looking over my shoulder, wondering if this was the day.
I swore I’d never be a teacher.
Granby “Killdozer” Rampage, 2004
I was on my way to Grand Lake for a summer job with the rec district. My best friend, Levi, ran the theatre camp for a gaggle of local kids. It was my third year working for him, commuting from Boulder to stay with his family for the summer. Driving over the pass, the mountains unfolded. Trees rose up on either side and then the views began. Peaks still tipped in snow.
It was foggy, a strange occurrence for a Friday in June. Driving through the little towns that peppered the two-lane highway, I thought about how everything here was always the same. It was what I loved most about this job.
To the west was an expanse of meadows and lakes, ponds really. Crooked Creek wound its way through valley, pooling in places before the road turned sharply away. The fog heightened the colors so that everything was green and blue and burgundy. Colors that lived there fleetingly in summer. Soon the mountains would be greedy, taking back the snowmelt from the spring. Bits of sun snuck through and glinted across the rough grasses as I moved past the strange log towers that characterized the town of Kremmling and made my way toward Granby.
The sun was starting to sink behind the peaks. As I reached the bridge, turning north, then west again, traffic stopped. It was still mud season and few tourists should have been arriving; the traffic made no sense. The fog thickened and then I realized it was smoke. I was young, just twenty, I didn’t listen to the news. Traffic was diverted off the bridge and back out of town, the long way, around the ranch. In the distance, the buildings were in ruins.
When I finally arrived in Grand Lake, they told me a white man in town had used concrete to reinforce a bulldozer, creating a makeshift tank. He had rampaged through City Hall and the bank, shooting at residents and destroying the buildings. He believed that he had been slighted, had tried to detonate a homemade bomb and when that didn’t work, he took to his tank. He had taken out a police car and a fire truck before taking his own life.
Locals said it was the kind of thing that happened in big cities.
The man who killed himself and destroyed the town had said, “I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable.” His words became a slogan for US far right extremists.
On Monday, we took a CPR class. Camp started the following week.
Deer Creek Middle School Shooting, 2010
It was the second semester of my first-year teaching. A man pulled into a parking lot not far away and began shooting. He injured two students before being taken down by faculty. They were called heroes. He was called mentally ill.
We had active shooter drills the next day. My students were asked to hide silently under their desks, ninth grade girls and boys, crumpled and quiet in a space that didn’t quite meet their growing bodies. Lila refused, so I let her stand with me in the corner, next to the light switch. We thrust the colored card under the door, letting administration and police know we were all accounted for, all safe. My students got restless, began to snicker. After the twenty-minute drill, I went back to teaching.
Over the next two years, we had several of our own encounters; some threats, some active shooters. Each time they were in the neighborhood surrounding the campus. Each time we cowered, trying to get away from the huge picture windows that let so much sun into my tiny classroom. The second one happened at the end of the day; we went into lockdown as the bell rang. School was over, so I told my students that it would be okay, closed all the blinds, thrust that green card under the door yet again, and put on a movie. We made popcorn in my tiny microwave and huddled on the floor together, pretending everything was okay. As they watched the movie, I glanced out the window in the door, looked around the room, trying to decide if there was anything worth using as a weapon. Trying to decide if it was worth breaking into the boiler room attached to the back of my classroom so that I could hide my students. I moved toward the door so that I would be the first person the shooter encountered if it came to that.
As the sun set we were told we could leave; the situation had been handled.
Before walking into school the next day, I sat in my car, crying. There hadn’t really been any danger, I told myself, but all I could think was, ‘What about next time?’ When they moved our department to an upstairs hallway, I was relieved to no longer be on the front line.
Aurora Theater Shooting, 2012
I flew to LA the day after it happened. It was July and I was going to meet my brother, who had just gotten a real apartment in the city. The shooting hadn’t sunk in, at that point, there had just been so many. I didn’t realize then that several of my students had been in the audience. I didn’t realize that Alex, a classmate and my mom’s favorite student, had died.
I got off the plane with Preston, who had traded seats to be near me, had made me laugh for the two-hour flight. He was heading to Mexico on a surfing trip, but we agreed to stay in touch. He was passing back through Colorado later in the summer, about the time I would land there again. When we parted ways, I looked up and realized that The Dark Knight was advertised everywhere, huge posters glaring down at us, mocking how many had just died. It made me angry. I felt like that pain was commoditized.
Two days later, I was sitting at a sidewalk café with my family when a man jumped off a building.
It sounded like a gun shot. Something I've only really heard once, at a Taco Bell or something equally as disgusting, just off of campus my freshman year. That time someone was shot in a fight with a rival gang. This time no one was shot, but the sound still reverberated. A man was lying crumpled and naked on the street.
I was the only one facing the street. We were eating breakfast in the middle of LA. A deli that only served one thing. There were two officers at the table next to us, gaping yawns as they drank their morning coffee. The sound was a crack, like the earth had opened up. Then traffic stopped and swerved and screamed. They, the cops, didn't get up right away, didn't seem to realize that anything had happened until Mom turned and said to them, “there's a body in the street.”
Thin and naked, his husk stained the concrete. At first it looked as though he'd been hit by the truck that had swerved. But the dead man’s arms were bent up like broken wings, one sticking up at the elbow, looking like a final plea from a school kid begging to answer a question. His legs bent underneath him, as though he'd just sat down.
I’d seen a man run out in front of a truck before, they had collided right in front of me. That man was drunk, leaving a bar. He didn't look, didn't stop at all, just ran into the middle of the street at midnight. His body made a different sound. Dull, a thud, not a crack. That man seemed fine; he ran away before anyone could do anything.
This had report. This man hadn’t been on the street. He had fallen or tried to fly. And the only sound was impact, just a single crack. I think we're all connected. If that's the case, small parts of me keep dying. I wonder which part that was?
I haven’t been in a movie theater since.
STEM School Highlands Ranch, 2019
When I left teaching, there was a piece of me that was relieved to have a break from all the death.
King Soopers Boulder, 2021
At least it wasn’t a school…
How is this still happening?