Did Eric love his mom, I mean of course he did, but was he close to her ? I feel like Eric was Kathy’s little baby (I don’t know how to explain it otherwise) while Kevin was closer to Wayne.

Yes, I think he was closer to mom than to dad. Here’s an old post of mine on the subject that’ll hopefully answer your question.

Excuse me if you already answered, but who were Dylan’s crushes ?

@everlasting-contrast has a list of posts about Dylan’s possible crushes in her FAQ. I don’t have anything to add to that list, as those posts are well-researched and comprehensive.

Did you ever get to play Eric’s Doom levels? I believe you could download them and still play them today.

I know other people have played them, but I’m not that big on videogames myself and probably wouldn’t get very far if I attempted to play his levels. I think they’re still available online – this seems to be one of the sources?

Did Eric break his right wrist ? If he did when was it ?

As far as I know, the only thing Eric ever broke was his nose. I think that it would show up in his medical records if he had broken anything else. The only thing that vaguely relates to what you’re asking is the hand injury he was treated for in late ‘95, but there are no specifications as to what exactly that injury was about. When in doubt, it’s best to pull these up:

What do you think of the girls who claim they are connected to Eric and Dylan? I’m open-minded but it baffles me a bit. Often, the reason they believe they are connected are because of the intensity of their feelings, but if they looked around them, they’d realize many feel that way too. It feels more like a snowflake syndrom and big ego than the truth. I just wanted your opinion on this.

I think there are different kinds of connection to distinguish here, which most people don’t bother to do.

One of the main connections is always something personal that makes people relate to the boys, opens people up to their stories, makes them feel like they have a safe outlet within the community that talks about these boys, and so on and so forth. It’s why many of us find it hard to shake the case once we get into it, and why we can get emotional about certain aspects of it and feel like there’s this connection between us here today and the boys back then.

Another connection, which I think is the one you mean, is one where people claim to be spiritually connected to the boys and claim to have psychic abilities. It used to be a recurring theme in the community (right now, I think that’s been replaced with imagines? lol) and it seemed to me like a lot of people were going out of their way to lay some sort of claim over the boys that way. The more exclusive-sounding the claim to connection was (twin flames, anyone? jeez), the better. I think it’s lessened somewhat lately, but I’m quite sure there are still people claiming all and sundry about this stuff today. It feels to me like people are often trying to one-up each other with it and trying to make themselves sound special, especially when it’s all they ever really talk about on their blogs or something they keep on mentioning offhand somehow.

People who’ve followed me for years will know that I don’t have any issues with spirituality (far from it), that I am comfortable with psychic abilities and all that jazz, and that I too have sensed a connection of sorts to the boys. There are some intense feelings and experiences involved in all of that, which I’ve elected to not speak about in public because they’re too personal for me. That’s been my own choice and I don’t expect other people to make the same one. However, I also keep things private because I don’t feel the need to convince anybody of anything and am perfectly content minding my own business. I must admit I have a hard time understanding those who just keep airing everything they sense and experience, as it’s not my style at all and I know that most of the more legit psychic/spiritual/magical communities out there would agree with me that not every spiritual experience is intended for public consumption.

With all of that said, I think that anyone who makes these sort of claims about being connected to the boys needs to understand that they are not the only ones on this planet with such a claim and that other people’s feelings and experiences may very well be just as valid and meaningful as their own. I think people need to inject a good dose of healthy skepticism into how they approach spirituality in general and not make assumptions about anything that could very well evolve into outright wishful thinking. I think people need to educate themselves on the ins and outs of this subject as much as they can – aside from it being a great opportunity for personal growth and stability, this kind of knowledge is also an asset that can allow you to discern truth and reality with much more ease.

It’s okay to feel connected. It’s okay to sense the boys. It’s okay to have some really weird-ass experiences that all relate back to this case. It happens, it happens. Nothing you can do about that – and nothing to be ashamed of or feel bad about or be ridiculed over, either. The only thing I want to impress upon people is that sometimes it pays off to keep your own counsel and carefully choose with whom you share the things that matter to you. This isn’t a competition or some kind of race you can win, after all. Live your own truth and don’t be too afraid to ask yourself the hard questions. Lay a claim if you feel you must, but don’t be an ass to other people who claim a connection too. It can be this simple..

Who do you think Eric really was?

In an old post, I keyworded Eric’s personality like this:

Headstrong and stubborn to a fault, black-and-white thinking, hilarious,
warm, possessive, dogged, timid, scared, unable to process strong
emotions, steadfast, intelligent, all over the place, ragefest-y,
rebellious, opinionated, destructive, animal lover through and through,
visionary in short bursts and pauses, sensitive as all hell, like one of
those blowfish that just kinda go *poof* with the stabby bits when you
threaten them, a fighter, methodical, ‘the good son’.

I keep referring to him as a child throughout this blog, because in many ways I feel like Eric never really grew up. He was barely eighteen when he died, but sometimes reads as a lot younger than that. I don’t think NBK was a game to him, at least not in the strong motivations and emotions that lay at its core, and yet the way he approached the preparations and the event itself was one extensive and childlike “dream big”-moment that never fully anchored itself in reality until the last seconds of his life.

When I think of Eric, I don’t think of him as this kind of ‘lost cause’ that other people love to say he was. I think of him as a rather scared child, as someone who tried to hold onto things and people with all his might but kept getting torn away from them regardless, as someone who could’ve grown out to become a man with a sharp eye for what makes people tick, as this dude who was kind of an asshole and threw far too many temper tantrums in his lifetime but could also be a really funny and warm person if he felt safe and comfortable. I think of him in endless contradictions and probably in softer terms than he deserves half the time, but I also acknowledge that there was a huge component to him that was about battlefields and open rebellion.

I think he was just a kid. I think he was insecure and volatile, but also strong in his convictions and opinions. I think he was very sensitive, very lonely, and very hurt. I think he didn’t know when to let things go. I think he created a story for himself in which he could still be some kind of hero for himself, even when that story would be steeped in death and destruction and wouldn’t be seen as heroic by those of us left standing in its ashes. I always think of him as this warrior spirit who’d never go out without a fight and who’d always need some kind of cause or goal to work toward. I think he was a murderer.

I think he was human.

This is a part of who he was.

am i alone in thinking that the marines wouldnt be the best choice for eric? that boi needed to calm down &do a lot of growing

No, you’re not alone in this. I’ve often thought that another choice would be preferable to that one, especially because I feel he needed something that would distance him from ‘the family legacy’ and going into the Marines is pretty much about adhering to that legacy. I also don’t think that the very masculine environment of the Marines would’ve done him any favours, as Eric was quite sensitive and needed a safe outlet for his emotions more than he needed to be the tough guy.

However, I also think that the camaraderie of the Marines would’ve been a wonderful thing for him to experience and I do think that he would’ve taken well to certain aspects of their training. I’m not sure how well he would’ve dealt with following orders, because he was deferential to those in authority to a degree but also rallied against following others blindly. The Marines would have certainly been a great growth opportunity for him, but I don’t think he would’ve calmed down much if he’d gone on to enlist. It’s a tricky thing and I personally feel that he would’ve been much, much better off away from this.

Hi, I really hope I won’t bother you but I’m doing a research about Columbine, I’m not from the USA, and you’ve said before that the diagnosis of Eric as “pyschopath” is wrong, do you have any book or source that talks about this? not just in Eric’s case. It would be very useful, thank you in advance!

Hi! Don’t worry, you’re not a bother at all. I’m not from the USA either, so I don’t think our locations are too relevant in this matter.

All of the official sources on Columbine pretty much bend Eric toward the psychopath narrative or promote that narrative outright. I’m not exactly the lone prophet shouting dissent in the desert here when it comes to this, as many amateur researchers and Columbiners agree with me that it’s not the ideal narrative for Eric, but my own writings on Eric are some of the only ones that offer an alternative explanation.

When I say that the diagnosis is wrong, I say that primarily because of three reasons. None of these reasons really discuss Eric’s psychological makeup in-depth, as my issues with the diagnosis for him are based on more abstract reasons. While I don’t think it’s likely that Eric was a psychopath, I cannot in good conscience discount it as a possibility altogether given the fact that I never spoke with him during his lifetime and we have no access to any information from his psychiatrist that would support or discount the theory. As such, my three reasons for rallying against the diagnosis are as follows:

1. We cannot diagnose anyone with anything post-mortem. There have been some studies into doing this, from what I’ve been able to tell, but obviously they ran into some issues when it came to diagnosing specific disorders (particularly mood disorders) and the validity of these diagnoses is therefore highly debatable. Diagnosing people in a credible fashion means that you actually need to be able to speak with them, ask them questions, ask people in their environment questions, and get them to fill out several forms and questionnaires designed to aid with the diagnosis. While Eric was in treatment during the time he was alive, no information was ever released on the exact nature of his issues and thus we cannot possibly diagnose him with anything ourselves. We might say ‘this diagnosis is more likely based off this and this in the evidence’, but we can’t push for one gospel truth the way officials have been doing with the psychopath-thing.
2. Psychiatrists are still debating how to include psychopathy in the official diagnostic manuals, if it should be included at all given its occasional overlap with existing diagnoses, and which criteria to use for it if it is going to be included. Their field of expertise always shifts and changes with new research and developments and what was included today may not even be valid tomorrow, so even if psychopathy is included to a degree now it may be subject to change depending on how the views on it develop over time.
3. Children cannot be diagnosed with psychopathy. They might show precursors to psychopathy, but the actual diagnosis is only given to those of age 18 and older. This is actually the case with many diagnoses that fall into the category of personality disorders, as it is believed by many professionals that children and teenagers are still undergoing a great many developmental changes that impact the validity of such a pervasive diagnosis like a personality disorder. Given the fact that Eric was barely 18 when he died and that much of the material the diagnosis for him was based on was constructed by him when he was younger than 18, we cannot accept the psychopath diagnosis as valid because he was still growing up at the time and his brain had likely not settled into its adult form just yet.

This page has a whole lot of background information and overviews of everything associated with psychopathy, including many mentions of studies and other materials that talk about the research and other things involved in it. This is an interesting piece on psychopathy and ASPD, while this mentions some of the issues with psychopathy in a forensic/criminological context. This is a great historical overview of psychopathy and how to perhaps include it in future (full text is available as a pdf in the sidebar). This specifically mentions the issues with psychopathy when it comes to diagnosing children/teenagers with it.

If you really want to go into why it’s wrong to diagnose Eric with it, you might need to focus on the latter point of it not being an appropriate diagnosis for young people under age 18. For this, you’d have to do some reading into child development and specifically about the way in which the brain develops during our teenage years. There is a lot of great material out there about this subject. Some books of note are this one and this one.

Psychopathy is a very specific subject that’s still researched and developed today. There are some known issues with it, but most of the research shows that there are some bases in reality that support its existence. Typing ‘psychopathy controversy’ or something similar to that into Google will land you with a shitton of links and studies that mention the ongoing debate about it. Really, your best bet is to google it out and use Google Scholar for actual studies about psychopathy and its controversies. (That is what I would advise, as I also use that as one of my own sources when it comes to stuff like this.) I personally don’t take up issue with psychopathy in general – it seems to be credible enough at the moment, from all I’ve read about it, and I’m not in the mood to do a full-on rebuttal of its validity – but I really take offense to it when it’s used for Eric because of the reasons stated above.

I know you asked for outright sources and I hope some of the ones I provided will at least steer you into the right direction, but it’s a very broad subject to cover and I don’t know the precise avenue your own research is going to be focused on. I also pull a lot of my own information from the time in which I studied child development and worked in association with psychiatrists and other professionals, so I often work from memory when I write posts like these rather than off specific sources. I hope some of this helps, though!

Did Eric knew he wasn’t eligible for the marines? I see some people say he knew about it which also cause the shooting and some people he had no idea. Can you please help me understand which one is correct.

Both are correct. Here’s why:

1. The Marine recruiter never got to tell Eric that he was officially not eligible for recruitment. He’d left a voicemail at the Harris residence a few days before the massacre with the request for Eric to call him back. Eric never did.
2. At the last meeting they had before the phonecall, Eric’s mom specifically asked the recruiter if Eric would still be eligible if he was taking an antidepressant. She showed the recruiter one of the bottles and he wrote the information down so he could check on the eligibility status in relation to these later. The recruiter did mention to Eric that this was a problem, though, and Eric would have known enough about the recruitment rules to know that both his condition and his taking antidepressants were things that rendered him ineligible to join.

I personally do not count the Marine rejection as a cause for the shooting. I believe the application to have been a long shot that Eric knew would not work out before he even tried it and I believe that Eric used the application as a means of getting his parents off his back and draw attention away from the fact that he had no future plans at all. It was an opportunistic application instead of one his heart was truly in – if he’d been eligible, he would not have altered his plans for the massacre at all.

Remember when Dylan and Eric write down the links to the porn sites? What were they, asking for a friend ;)

Remember when the dudes were alive in the 90s and used websites that are lost to the void in our current day and age? Remember when the 90s weren’t the era of streaming videos and easy-to-find porn like our era is today? Yeah. You can google the info if you really want to, but it’s rather pointless overall.

were E&D truly best friends?

They killed and died together. They were brothers in arms with a very deep trust between them.

The term ‘best friends’ doesn’t quite apply here, in my opinion, and evidence shows that their friendship was more complex and not free of issues. Evidence also suggests that Dylan did not see Eric as his absolute best friend, which I believe to be an accurate assessment, but that does not mean that the bond between them was somehow less strong for it.

what is your reaction to shows like 13 reasons why and american horor story (murder house) they feature high school shootings. Tyler is bullied he is well equiped with shotguns and pipe bombs while tate shoots at the library. Why is it school shooting is the only option of the outcast and bullied kids?

I only read the book for 13 Reasons Why, which never featured the precursor to a school shooting as a subplot. I’ve been meaning to get around to watching the show, but between what I’ve seen of it/read about it so far and all the other stuff on my watchlist right now I don’t think I’ll be tuning in any time soon. That show is a bit of a conundrum in that it talks freely of difficult subjects such as suicide, but also seems to glorify aspects of it and turns outright jarring in its physical representation of some of these difficulties. As it is a show that is marketed primarily toward teenagers, there is logical cause for concern: while the show may open up dialogue about things such as depression and suicidal ideation, it may also act as a trigger for troubled kids and have a more harmful effect than a positive one overall. Adding a school shooting subplot to this would not only be overkill, but it would be outright dangerous given how poorly the showrunners seem to have handled certain aspects of the story so far. It would be ill-advised for them to pursue this in season 2 (why the fuck there is a confirmed season 2 I’ll never know) and I pray that the backlash against the show will continue to be as unforgiving as it is now in the hopes that it will either change their narrative tone in the future or deter them from pursuing a subject as complex as a school shooting within their show.

American Horror Story, on the other hand, isn’t a show that’s marketed toward teenagers. Its official rating reflects this, too. I know that quite a few teens watch the show, but the showrunners for AHS do not have a responsibility toward them the way I feel the showrunners of 13 Reasons Why do. Because AHS is geared toward a more mature/adult audience overall, it gets away with showcasing graphic and confrontational material that it would never be at liberty to showcase in a show geared toward a teenage audience. If a teen tunes in to watch AHS and reacts to a trigger in that show, then the fault is far less that of the showrunners and far more that of, say, a disconnected parent not knowing which media their child is being exposed to. As such, the school shooting subplot in season one and Tate’s overall characterisation fit into the narrative of a lingering haunting and problems that are not magically resolved upon death. The fact that Tate’s been romanticised to hell and back since is cause for concern, in my opinion, though not wholly surprising overall, but the school shooting itself was so obviously modelled on Columbine and dealt with sensitively enough within the narrative that it likely was not a massive trigger for any troubled souls watching it.

The difference between the two shows isn’t only in age demographic and overall narrative purposes, but also in the tone they take when it comes to these issues they choose to address: 13 Reasons Why seems to treat suicide as a legitimate way out and seems to shoot down any real avenues of help that are so important to people who’re dealing with these sorts of problems, while AHS clearly reflects that our unresolved issues will always come back to bite us in the ass somehow but that there is also room for hope and growth within that space of grief and pain. 13 Reasons Why edges too close to glorification, from what I’ve seen and heard, which is not what I observed in the way AHS chose to handle similar subjects.

School shootings are a thing now. They’re an ongoing real-life problem. They’re also very, very powerful narrative symbols. When done right in fiction, they can be wonderful treatises on human nature and great observations of our climate and culture today. When done wrong, they can be triggering and cause real-life concerns. As with every sensitive subject, it’s a writer’s obligation to remain as neutral in judgment as possible while also acting as a deterrent rather than as an inspiration source. The narrative won’t benefit from a kneejerk “this guy was evil and he shot a bunch of innocent people”-view, but it won’t benefit from a “look at this great way to solve your problems, kids!”-promotion either. The best way to handle it lies somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. School shootings have become that classic narrative claim of the bullied and the outcast, like you said, and a huge part of that is due to the impact that Columbine has had on our pop culture. (I could go on about this for a long time, to be honest, haha, but I’d have to pull up a shitton more sources and make an even longer post so I’m going to cut myself short here and hope this is a satisfactory answer so far. <3)

You think Eric would’ve been abusive towards his girlfriend if he had one?

I think he had the potential to be. He displayed behaviour (jealous, controlling, possessive, you name it) that can turn very toxic in an intimate relationship and carries the potential for abuse. His anger issues were a major cause for concern and his aggressive and relentless way of clamping down on any kind of hurt feelings would be very hard to deal with. Furthermore, he held grudges and sought to alienate people on a regular basis. While he had a baseline of respect and kindness toward some girls/women that’s also well-documented, he wasn’t above calling them names behind their backs and he definitely weirded some of the girls he met/talked with out. Eric was not in a very good headspace and it’s hard to tell what that headspace would produce in a relationship with any girl. It could go all right and he could definitely make a change for the better, but it could also become a long and strained affair that would border on abuse or become abusive outright.

I have attempted to warn people of this in past posts I made about any kind of girlfriend situation for Eric, because I want people to recognise that this is a legit possibility and that they should never invite that kind of crap into their own personal relationships. I know that people have the tendency to romanticise Eric (and Dylan more so) to some degree, which reads to me as fairly dangerous when it normalises the parts of their behaviour that were not healthy. It makes us more susceptible to allowing behaviours like that from people in our own lives, while we should not be tolerant of anything that seeks to control us or change us or diminish us. Wishing one of them could be your boyfriend is setting yourself up for a hurt and a disaster you do not need or deserve in your life.

No matter how kind I have been (and will likely always be) about and toward Eric, I am very keenly aware that his troubles would have affected any relationship he would’ve engaged in and do not believe for a second that a loving relationship alone would have been enough to turn his life around. There’s a huge, gaping abyss of hurt in that boy. While we can hopefully recognise it in him and speak of it with care, we cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that this abyss has the potential to turn on the people closest to it.

What is your stance on guns? (personally I don’t like them)

I’m all for gun control and do not particularly feel the need to own guns myself. I have a hard time understanding the American culture that normalises gun ownership, because I live in a country in which this is not the norm and in which gun ownership is only allowed under specific circumstances. As such, I grew up in a totally gun-free environment and have therefore formed a stance on guns that’s more anti than pro. I like them just fine in fiction and do not have an issue with being exposed to gun violence in media, but I would rather have them remain a thing of fiction when it comes to my own life and environment. I don’t need them to be everyday reality and think that the US in particular needs to reassess how it handles gun ownership because it is a huge contributor to these mass shootings that keep on happening over there.

You seem like a really smart person so I thought I should ask you this. Is beating your child from time to time when they have done something bad (as a form of teaching them a lesson) physical abuse? And if so what psychological/social problems can that child have later in life?

Thank you for that compliment, first of all – it’s awesome to be seen as smart. =)

Physically disciplining your child is illegal in some countries, so that already indicates that it’s a controversial thing to do. Spanking a child can be the first step to more severe forms of abuse, especially if the act is born out of anger and loss of control on the parent’s part. It can also be the case that the parent doesn’t know any alternative disciplinary methods outside of spanking – time-outs, removal of privileges, and positive reinforcements of appropriate behaviours are preferable methods that any parent can use as an alternative to physically disciplining their child.

It’s superimportant for a child to be treated as nonaggressively as possible. More important than this, however, is that the parent needs to be aware of their child’s developmental stages. Sometimes, parents punish their children for failing to do something when the kids are not yet capable of doing that. For instance, self-control and focus in crowded environments are totally not the domain of a five-year-old. They’ll get distracted and aren’t always capable of ignoring those distractions. The reason for that is simple: self-control and focus are part of the frontal lobes of the brain, which aren’t fully developed or connected to the rest of the brain until early adulthood. Once you know this as a parent, you’ll adjust your expectations for how your child responds to these distractions. The same goes for other developmental stuff – it’s miraculous how much less you need to discipline a child when you’re aware of what they are capable and incapable of doing at their age and adjust how you speak with them and what you expect from them according to that knowledge.

Similarly, some of the child’s own emotional and physical responses may be born out of their inability to fully communciate how they’re feeling and what’s going on inside of them – it takes time and growth for them to be able to pinpoint what’s wrong. I once worked with a kid who said he felt hungry, but was really feeling angry – he associated anger with hunger because both of those feelings made his stomach hurt/gnaw. Once I’d figured that out, it became easier to communicate with him. I’ve seen similar things in a lot of other kids, so parents need to be mindful that sometimes their child may react more extremely or not be fully capable of talking about what’s going on. Again, that’s all developmental stuff – instead of getting angry because your kid’s having a total nuclear meltdown, try to discover why all buttons are set to nuke right now and how to defuse that situation without becoming emotional yourself. If you have to take a step back and take a deep breath before you can do that, that’s fine. Anything is preferable to hitting your child, after all, and physical discipline doesn’t do anybody any good. You’ll feel bad, your kid will feel bad, it’s just not constructive in the long run..

And when I mean not constructive, I mean showstoppingly bad in terms of what it does to a child. Educator John Holt once wrote “when we make a child afraid, we stop learning dead in its tracks”. A child doesn’t learn how to resolve conflict in a healthy way when they are disciplined aggressively by their own parent. Physical punishment in particular can give the child the impression that physical aggression is an appropriate way to express feelings and solve problems. It can also increase feelings of anger and vengeance in the child itself, which can lead to more problems later in life. Physical punishment may be effective in the moment, but has proven to be less effective than other forms of punishment in the long term when it comes to the child changing their behaviour. It
can lead to increased aggression, antisocial behavior, physical injury and mental health problems for children.

For more information, please refer to this pdf.

Long story short: I think that there is never a reason to implement physical and (other) aggressive forms of discipline in the way you raise a child. I think that it is harmful for the child to be exposed to these ways of ‘behavioral modification’ (that have been proven as ineffective time and time again) and I think that these ways create more problems for the child in the long run because of the issues that arise from them, including things such as:

• direct physical harm
• negative impacts on mental and physical health
• poor moral internalisation and increased antisocial behaviour
• increased aggression in children
• increased violent and criminal behaviour in adults
• damaged education
• damaged family relationships
• increased acceptance and use of other forms of violence

If you really want to teach your child a lesson, learn to listen to them first and educate yourself on your child’s inner world. Approach them with positivity and reinforce the behaviours you want to see from them with praise. Lead by example, because children look to you and learn from your own behaviours. Beating your child is never necessary and only creates more problems for yourself and your child.

Do you not get much in this blog anymore? Do you think Eric had other friends he considered close? Other than Dylan? Also did other people consider Eric to be a good friend or just Dylan?

I’m on a semi-extended break right now, yeah, thanks for noticing.

Eric didn’t have any other really close friends in Littleton. Sue Klebold mentioned in her book that Dylan was Eric’s most significant friendship and that this was a huge part of the reason why the boys were allowed to stay in touch after the van break-in had happened. Kathy Harris expressed concerns about the possibility of Eric losing Dylan as a friend, which basically signifies that Dylan was the one Eric bonded with most in that town. While Eric was friendly with some other people besides Dylan, there are strong indications that he also felt left out from time to time and there are plenty of stories about him getting into arguments within his circle of friends.

I think people considered Eric to be an all right friend, but not someone they were close to or confided much in. He had a volatile personality, which isn’t always the best basis for a friendship, and he came to Littleton a lot later like a stranger in a strange land. Even Dylan struggled with being a friend to Eric sometimes, so that speaks volumes about how difficult Eric could be. I’d advise you to read the statements made by their circle of friends/acquaintances, though, because they have some pretty insightful statements to share about their relationships with both Eric and Dylan and also made observations about the friendship between the boys themselves.

I just want to thank you for what you wrote about giftedness. Growing up I was referred to as gifted at certain things, but I’d never thought of it as something describing how I was as a person. I was told that I was ‘mature’ or ‘clever’ and that the other kids would ‘catch up’ with me. It was an isolating experience and I got bullied a lot. I related to so much of what you wrote about Dylan, and it made me feel a bit less like it was my fault or that there was something wrong with me. Thanks :)

You’re very welcome, and thank you for this message!

Growing up gifted certainly isn’t without its issues. A lot of people assume that it’s nothing but a positive run, because your intelligence allows you to learn things with greater ease than other people do. I can’t count the amount of times people around me assumed that I knew everything and was immediately good at everything I set my mind to, which is a huge expectation that I found hard to deal with as a kid and therefore it stressed me out endlessly when I wasn’t perfect at something. Still does, on some level, although age has taught me that I don’t need to be perfect and that ‘good enough’ is acceptable to virtually everyone too.

Also, it’s been my observation throughout the years that most of the other kids never ‘catch up’. Not really. It gets a little easier with age to relate to them and have them relate to you, maybe, but there’s always going to be a part of your brain that will feel different from them. There will always be those moments when you feel entirely alone and like nobody in this world is going to understand why something is fascinating or funny or hopeful or inspiring or simple or easy to grasp. (I hope it doesn’t sound arrogant or elitist, because that’s not my intent. It’s just how it is for me and many other gifted folks I have met – hard to explain the exact sentiment behind that, but it’s more of an observation of difference rather than something that’s intended to make other people feel bad in any way.)

I think that our intelligence is never our fault. The way our brain works is perfectly natural, but not everyone on this earth shares that quality with us. It’s like some people being better at painting than others, or some people being more inclined to do sports and do them well, or some people being more proficient at learning a new language. Our giftedness is an asset in how we learn things and how we see the world, but it’s also a very vulnerable asset because the world doesn’t always tolerate it. Like you, I’ve had experiences with bullying and feeling isolated from everyone around me. It did make me feel like there was something wrong with me, which is why it’s so important to me now to let other people like me know that they’re not on their own and that they’re perfectly normal just the way they are. I’m so glad to hear that some of what I wrote has been able to give you back that feeling that you’re perfectly all right as you are – gifted and beautiful. =)

If they were about to make a new Columbine film next year, who would you want to be cast as Dylan and Eric?

I’d want them to cast two unknowns who haven’t been in any other show/movie as of yet. Seeing known actors in those roles would be far too jarring. They’d have to be young, look similar to the actual dudes (Dylan being taller than Eric is not negotiable, for instance), and bring the right degrees of vulnerability and aggression into their respective roles.

Also, it goes without saying that any Columbine film must be made outside of Dave Cullen’s influence.

For my senior project (high school), i studied school shootings as they’re something really close to me (i live 20 minutes away from Sandy hook and know people who were there). I just wanted to say your blog has been such an amazing resource for me! you’re super respectful to everyone and always helpful! keep doing what you do!

Thank you so much for this lovely message! I’m glad it’s been a great resource for you and I hope that your senior project went well. =) It’s really awesome to get a message like this during one of my infamous downtimes, in which I find it hard to focus on Columbine and wonder why I’m keeping a blog on it. Helps remind me of how much good being here can do, so thank you again.

Hey there. I love your page. I’m sorry if this was asked before, but didn’t Eric’s dog die before 4/20. I remember reading that Dylan took a few shifts for Eric cause his dog was sick. (And I thought it said that he either put the dog down or that the dog died.) Do you know the answer to this? I only thought about it because I read someone’s post saying something like “Erics’s dog was probably wondering why he never came home that day.” and I was confused. Thank you. :) Sorry if I am wrong.

Hi, thanks for the compliment!

I think you might have read Sue Klebold’s mention of this in her book. Here’s the quote:

Mid-February, Dylan came downstairs dressed to go to work, though he wasn’t scheduled. Eric’s dog Sparky was seriously ill, so Dylan had picked up Eric’s shift at Blackjack. I was fond of the little dog and felt sad for Eric; it’s hard to lose a pet, especially an animal you’ve grown up with. As he left the house, I gave Dylan a hug and told him how proud I was that he was such a responsible employee and a good and loyal friend.

We know Sparky suffered from epileptic seizures. My old dog had those too and they can really be terrifying experiences that impact the animal’s general wellbeing when they occur. They can’t really be left alone in the house when they’ve recently had an attack, especially if it was a severe one that leaves them sick and weak, so it makes sense that Eric would ask Dylan to cover his shift for him.
The way Sue describes it, you’d think the dog was on his last legs.. but with every seizure you do get that feeling of “maybe this is the moment we lose the dog”, in my experience at least, so it’s possible that Eric thought Sparky may not have a lot of time left in this world.

We also know that Sparky was still alive on prom night, as Susan DeWitt mentioned the dog in her testimony and said that Eric had let the dog out and back in that night during the time she was there. Seeing as prom night was only a few days before the massacre, I think it’s best to assume that Sparky was still alive at the time Eric died.