Authors: Brooks Brown Rob Merritt
My answer would always be simple.
“Because I hate school.”
“Brooks was grounded a lot,” said Randy Brown. “There was one program where the teachers would call us and say, ‘Brooks didn't do his homework this week,’ and he'd get grounded. We hoped that would get him to shape up. It didn't
.
“It drove us nuts because his behavior was so self-defeating,” he continued. “I could never figure out what his problem was. The more we would push him, the less he would do.”
However, the Browns weren't the kind of family that left the education of their sons completely to the school system. Both parents would read to the boys every night; while Judy read them children's classics or stories about history, Randy challenged them with more advanced literature like
Cyrano de Bergerac
and excerpts from
Les Miserables.
They also would make it a point to teach the boys a new vocabulary word each week. This led to some comical moments at school
.
“My favorite story was what happened to Aaron in first grade,” Judy said. “The teacher said, ‘Okay, class, I need words that have the short vowel sound ‘a.’ So she's going on with ‘cat,’ and ‘bat,’ and ‘hat.’ And Aaron raises his hand and says, ‘How about ‘anomaly?’ The teacher couldn't believe it. As the kids got older, we bought the Word Smart book and did a page a night at the table
.
“Most important, though, was that we wanted them to have a sense of culture,” she added. “We took them to high school plays. We'd take them to the Events Center, or to the touring companies of Broadway
shows that came through town. We went to
Peter Pan, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables . . .
We thought it was important that the boys learn about the good things in the world.”
In the fall of 1993, I started junior high at Ken Caryl Middle School. It meant a reunion with many of my old classmates from Governor's Ranch—and a major increase in the aggression that had been cultivated there.
Dylan and I were at the same school again. Yet we hardly saw each other, because students at Ken Caryl were divided into three groups, or “cores.” In seventh grade, you had cores 7A, 7B, and 7C. If you were in core 7A, you'd hardly ever cross paths with the kids in 7B. Dylan and I were in different cores. We might as well have been at different schools; I'd see him outside occasionally, but that was it.
Junior high was difficult, because the bullying had become worse. I got beat up a lot, especially by the athletic kids. Their reason was simple: I wasn't one of them. It's not like I didn't try; I even played basketball for the Ken Caryl team in seventh grade. I liked baseball and soccer, and sometimes I'd get in on football games if one got going on the field. But I didn't fit in with the mentality of the “jocks.” They didn't like me, and they refused to accept me into their groups. They preferred to just push the different kids around.
I went through a period of trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be—a person they would like and accept. I started bragging about myself, making up whatever I thought might make people like me. I'd tell people I had tested with a really high IQ, or I'd lie about how many miles per hour my fastball was. It was a stupid thing to do, but when you want friends, sometimes you try to paint yourself as someone
other than who you really are. You watch what other people are doing, you figure out what's “cool,” and you adapt accordingly.
Of course, it made no difference. So I decided to try and fight back. One time during recess I was being made fun of by this kid named Jeremy and a group of his friends. They followed me around, calling me “faggot” and making fun while I tried to play football at recess. They'd reach out and trip me, or kick me when I wasn't looking, and then laugh about it.
When I'd had enough, I followed him and said, “Hey, Jeremy, turn around.” He did, and I punched him in the nose as hard as I could. He fell down, but his friends immediately jumped on me. Needless to say, I took a pretty bad beating—and afterwards, as I was walking to the office, the other kids laughed and pointed at me, calling me a “pussy.”
Teachers would punish any kid who was involved in a fight, no matter who had started it. One time I was in the locker room after gym class when, without any provocation, a kid came up and kicked me square in the crotch. I immediately dropped to the ground, while my friend Matt Cornwell jumped on the offending kid and started throwing punches. All three of us wound up in the office.
Even though all three of us told the same story—the first kid even admitted that he'd kicked me first—all three of us were punished. I received a suspension simply because I'd been involved, even though I'd never thrown a single punch. Matt got an even bigger suspension because he'd defended me. You really begin to resent those in authority when things like that happen.
By eighth grade, I had started hanging out with kids in the “punk” crowd. The punk kids accepted me. They felt like outcasts, just as I did, and they identified with music that attacked the establishment and the majority. I also noticed that when you have friends around you, the bullies don't pick on you as much. They might still call you names as they
walk by, but they won't gang up on you and start hitting you. School felt like a prison yard, in a way: you find a “gang” of people to hang out with so that the other “gangs” leave you alone.
My grades dropped further, alarming my parents. We started fighting more and more. I just didn't care anymore—not about grades, not about my future, and definitely not about school. I was involved in a few extracurricular activities, like basketball at the YMCA and working with the disabled kids at school, but more and more, I started to drop out of them. By eighth grade, all I wanted was to hang out with my friends—friends that my parents really didn't approve of.
I did things to escape from my problems. I worked on computers. I played video games. I disappeared into books. Anything seemed better than the real world.
Dylan and I spent little time together during junior high. Not only were we not in the same classes, he wasn't part of my crowd. While I rebelled, frightening my parents, Dylan kept his anger inside and focused on being a good student. He didn't really come over to my house anymore, and for a while we lost track of each other.
However, Dylan was as much a target for the bullies as I was. He was still internalizing his anger and pain, escaping into computers or video games rather than deal with the troubles he faced. But that escape doesn't last for long. Eventually, the player must return to the real world—and when Dylan did that, the treatment he received from his classmates affected him deeply.
It wouldn't be until high school that I would learn just how much.
I CAME TO COLUMBINE IN THE FALL OF 1995, BELIEVING IN MY HEART that school was going to get better. All through junior high, all I had heard about were the opportunities at Columbine—the activities, the teachers, and the chance to learn about bigger and more adult things. New kids, new beginnings, and a new school. I had so much hope.
We arrived at a new Columbine, so to speak. During the summer of 1995, construction crews had torn down much of the school and performed a $15 million renovation on it. Our class, the class of 1999, would be the first to enter and graduate from the newly refurbished building.
That fall I met Eric Harris for the first time.
My friend Nick Baumgart had decided to make a haunted house out of his garage for Halloween. I'd known Nick since grade school, and we'd become friends again at Columbine, so when he asked people to come over and help, of course I pitched in.
Dylan came along, and he had Eric with him. I also met Zach Heckler, who like us was really into computers. In fact, a whole lot of people came out. It was just a silly haunted house, but everyone wanted to be a part of it. We were crazy freshmen looking for something cool to do.
I talked to Eric a little that night. The next day, I went to the bus stop and saw him there. He only lived a few blocks away from me; it turned out that we'd been riding the same bus and just hadn't really had much reason
to talk until now. Besides, Eric didn't ride every day. He would snag rides from his older brother whenever he could, because no one wants to be “one of the losers riding the bus.” But over the next few weeks, he and I started hanging out regularly.
Unlike Brooks and Dylan, Eric Harris did not grow up in Colorado. In fact, his family moved several times during his childhood. He was born on April 9, 1981, the second child of Wayne and Kathy Harris. Two years later, the family would move to Dayton, Ohio; by the time Eric was in third grade, they had relocated to Oscada, Michigan. When Eric was in sixth grade, the Harrises moved again, this time to Plattsburg, New York; a little over a year later, when Plattsburg Air Force Base closed, Wayne Harris retired from service and moved the family back to his native home of Colorado
.
From most accounts, it was hard for Eric to leave his friends behind each time he moved. Ken Caryl Middle School in Littleton would be the seventh school he had attended since kindergarten
.
Eric and Brooks never spoke at Ken Caryl, although Eric and Dylan became friends. Both loved computers, video games, and baseball. However, it would not be until their high school years that Eric and Dylan would become inseparable. Both were computer-savvy, both felt like outcasts, and both knew the pain of bullies and rejection
.
Also, both were quickly rejected by the establishment at Columbine
.
Eric's older brother Kevin was a kicker for the Columbine football team. Kevin had always been friendly toward us. He was technically the “jock” in the family, and he'd give us a hard time about being freshmen,
but it was always good-natured. Kevin was on the football team because he loved the game. It wasn't about status.
I've always enjoyed sports, but not the mentality that seems to go with them. I played basketball in junior high and enjoyed going to professional sports games with friends. Sometimes Dylan would talk to me about the fantasy football leagues he played in. The games themselves are great—I can relate to the excitement and the competition. But what I don't relate to are the people who equate sports with status. “I am a football player, and therefore I'm better than you.” “I am a basketball player, and therefore I deserve to make out with all the cheerleaders. Pathetic geeks like you are not on my level.” I couldn't understand that. I didn't see any reason to play a sport other than pure love of the game. Too many people at Columbine seemed to be playing for other reasons.
I don't mean to imply that all jocks in the world are jerks. I've known athletes who are good people. The thing is, Columbine's culture worshipped the athlete—and that unconditional adulation had a pretty bad effect on many of the jocks at our school.
Eric shared my opinion on that. That's why he didn't play for the Columbine soccer team, even though he loved soccer.
Yet Eric loved his brother, and he loved going to games during our freshman year to watch Kevin play. Some have suggested that there was some sibling rivalry there, since Kevin was a football player and Eric hated football players, but I never noticed any problems. There we were, cheering in the stands—and Eric was cheering as loud as the rest of us.
During freshman year, we formed a circle of friends that included Zach Heckler, Nick Baumgart, Eric, and Dylan. Our favorite place to hang out was the Columbine library.
The library was a great place to trade jokes, or sit and talk about how much we hated the school. Conversations like those were nothing unusual. But we'd have fun, too.
Nick earned himself a reputation early on as the clown of Columbine's Class of 1999. We quickly discovered that he would do virtually anything for money, no matter how stupid or humiliating it was. Once we paid him to make an ass of himself in the library by hitting on a girl he liked.
Usually this money would be no more than the couple of quarters that we could scrape together at the time, but for Nick, it was the principle of the thing. He didn't really care about the money; he just knew that he could make people laugh, and that it was his “designated role” at Columbine to be the clown. So he filled that role with a flourish.
Sometimes we would get so rowdy with our jokes that we'd get kicked out of the library for the rest of the day. Most of the time, though, we did our best to avoid causing trouble. After all, our favorite thing was using school computers to surf the Internet, and we didn't want to lose that privilege.
Freshman year was the best, because there were relatively few restrictions. In 1995 the Internet was still a relatively new trend, and school officials didn't know that much about what was on it. So the monitors didn't pay any attention when we went to sites like
InsaneClownPosse.com
, Monty Python Online, or News Askew, filmmaker Kevin Smith's Web site. We'd get online and screw around all through study hall.
Sophomore year, though, they changed the policy on us. Now we had to have permission to be on certain sites, and we'd get in trouble if we were caught surfing one that wasn't “education-related.” Our Columbine school ID cards had three “lights” on them: red, yellow, and green. The first time the teachers caught you going to a non-educational
site, they punched out the green light on your ID and called you a “yellow-lighter.” That meant you were “in trouble” and had a warning against you. If they caught you a second time, they punched the yellow light. That meant you weren't allowed to use the Internet for the rest of the year.
To enforce this policy, anyone using a computer in the school library had to put his or her ID card up on top of the computer monitor, so that the teachers on duty could see. That's not to say that you couldn't still go to “inappropriate” sites, though. I got away with it. You just had to be careful.
Computers were huge for us. Everyone is on the Internet now, but we were the kind of kids who were using it back when it was a “geek thing.” All of us loved to sit on a computer and do nothing else.