Columbine marked a new era in America: one of normalised school shootings (Picture: AFP)
My first day of kindergarten was a hot August day in 2004, in Ms Lawson’s class.
I remember that my biggest concerns were making sure I had a My Little Pony glitter backpack, a 24 pack of crayons (with the built in sharpener, of course) and being able to tie my shoes.
Within two months of starting school in North Carolina, we had our first ‘code red’ drill. Schools hesitated to use the name for what the drill was really meant to prepare us for – active school shootings.
I was five-years-old.
Managing to get a classroom of two dozen tiny, clueless kids to remain quiet and sit still in the dark is no easy feat, but Ms Lawson managed to do it.
‘Silent hide and seek,’ she explained to us.
These drills had become part of parcel of school life, ever since April 20, 1999.
That day, five years prior to my first ‘code red drill’, I was peacefully in my mother’s womb. By the time I was born, my future was confirmed: I was part of the Columbine generation.
The tragedy which befell Columbine High School saw two boys – who don’t deserve to be named – walk into the Colorado school armed with sawed off shotguns to murder 13 people.
It’s been 25 years since, and the tragedies have continued, year after year, with no change.
Most recently, Apalachee High School in Georgia suffered a mass shooting that killed four people and injured nine others.
Familiar condolences messages, thoughts and prayers have been issued to families of children killed while in classrooms. But nothing is different.
Blood was spattered on the floor of Columbine High School’s library (Picture: AP)
Images of parents waiting in fear to hear if their child was killed are all too familiar (Picture: Shutterstock)
I grew up running around in school hallways – namely, the preschool where my mother still works as a director. The school teaches kids as young as two and up to the age of five. They didn’t have ‘code red’ drills when I attended, but they do now.
‘The children don’t know what we’re doing,’ my mom tells me. ‘It’s like a game. “1, 2, 3, everyone down on the floor, be as quiet as you can! You did such a good job!’
‘But we never made it a point to talk to you kids about it because we didn’t want you to be scared or live in fear,’ she says.
My parents have three children: my brother, Matthew, and sister, Emily, born in the early 1990s, – then me, who joined the party in 1999.
Emily’s first year of kindergarten coincided with the 1996 Dunblane Massacre, which saw 16 children and one teacher killed in a small Scottish town.
The UK passed legislation after Dunblane enacting stricter gun laws, including a ban on handguns. Since, there have been no similar incidents in the UK. The US, however, has had 404 school shootings since Columbine.
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Source:: Metro
