Authors: Brooks Brown Rob Merritt
I was once asked in class to write something memorable about my childhood. I wrote about the moment I first read
Atlas Shrugged.
I identified with the idea that “Each man must live for his own sake, not sacrificing others to himself, or himself to others.”
We were individuals, all of us, and we were proud of it. Other kids tried to make us feel ashamed for feeling different. We never did. Their words hurt us, and we lived in constant fear and hatred of our tor-menters. But we were proud of who we were. When it came to getting through the day, that made all the difference.
FOR YEARS, MY PARENTS URGED ME TO FIND SOMETHING I COULD BE passionate about. I'd always tell them that I was passionate about computers and about books, but that never seemed to get them off my back about the constant string of C's and D's that I brought home from Columbine.
Whenever I found something really interesting at school, though, I threw myself into it. There were two things that fit this description for me at Columbine: the theatre program and the debate class.
My dad encouraged me to join the debate team. At first it just seemed like another class, so I thought, “Why not?” and signed up. But once I arrived, I discovered that I loved it. I loved being able to debate in a situation where the other person can't just say, “You're an idiot,” and walk off. Instead, the two of you have to continue until the judges say you're finished, and then afterwards they tell you, “Okay, you were right and you were wrong.” The judges don't know either of you, so their decisions are based solely on the arguments you presented.
I enjoyed that so much. When you argue with people in real life, no matter how rational you are, generally the other person says, “Well, kiss my ass, I know I'm right,” and then walks off acting like he won. In debate, we actually had to prove our points.
Not only that, debate allowed a student to constantly improve. After a debate, the judges will fill out a form telling you everything that you did or
didn't do right, and generally they will give you helpful hints. Also, during my freshman and sophomore years, I would approach the kids who did really well during competitions and ask them for pointers. All through high school, I did better at each tournament because of what they taught me.
Being in debate class automatically meant I was on the debate team. The competitions would take place on weekends, at locations all over Colorado. My freshman year, we took first place at the Jeffco Invite for Lincoln-Douglas Debates, which was an incredible feeling.
Lincoln-Douglas debates are the perfect exercise for the analytic thinker. For each issue I was assigned, I would have to prepare arguments for either side. I wouldn't know which position I would have to take in the debate until two minutes before the round. That's tough, because it means that even if your personal opinion falls on one side of an issue, you have to be able to argue the other side convincingly enough to defeat the person who is arguing the side that you agree with. It was exciting. It reinforced the idea that there is more than one way to think, and more than one side to any issue.
For someone like me, the debate team was a godsend. The only thing that matched it was drama class.
I didn't get along with most of my teachers, but it's amazing the power that a positive, caring teacher can have. My best experience with such a teacher was Sue Caruthers, Columbine's drama teacher.
Mrs. Caruthers—or “Mrs. C,” as we usually called her—ran the most fulfilling extracurricular program I've ever been a part of. There were three different drama classes: Beginning Acting, Intermediate Acting, and Advanced Acting. I entered the classes with my friend Zach Heckler, and both of us were immediately hooked.
In drama class we learned how to design light plots, run a soundboard, or help with set design. We also performed small scenes in class to polish our acting skills. The idea was that students in this class would
go on to participate in the Columbine theatre program, whether as actors or as tech crew members. Students would focus in one area or another, but most of us would do a little bit of everything.
The very first play I worked on was
Get Smart
, during the second semester of my freshman year. I played a student, and I had two lines. But I was also working as an assistant stage manager, and I helped build the sets. I loved the program, and participated in it all four years at Columbine.
Unfortunately, being an actor gave the bullies all-new ammo with which to target me.
Imagine seeing an attractive girl in the hallway who's in one of your classes, but who you've never really had the chance to talk with. Somehow, you get into a conversation with her. She seems nice, and you like her, and she's laughing and you're starting to get hopeful. Then a couple of football players come around the corner and say, “Hey, what the hell are you talking to her for, faggot? Do you actually think you have a chance with her?” And then they pick you up and push you into a locker, and you look like a pathetic weakling in front of the girl you were trying so hard to impress.
Such things were commonplace at Columbine. If a guy was acting in the Columbine drama program, he was immediately labeled a “drama fag.” Not only was he not playing sports—which was what all normal guys were supposed to do at Columbine—but
he was into that fine arts crap!
The bullies found whatever weakness they could and went after it. I was a wuss because I wasn't in sports. I was gay because I liked theatre. Then when I was in debate, it was like, “Ooh, you must be smart, huh huh huh.” Apparently, they thought calling someone “smart” was an insult.
Columbine students quickly found their roles and stuck to them. I found my role in the theatre; so did Zach Heckler. And when sophomore year rolled around, Dylan joined us. Dylan hadn't taken drama class like we had, but he had an interest in working technical stuff behind the
scenes, so Zach showed him what to do. It didn't take long for Dylan to become a sharp soundboard operator.
Besides theatre, though, the rest of our activities weren't so good. As freshmen and sophomores, we were already into drinking and smoking and would get trashed at each other's houses, or even in the light booth during plays. Dylan, in fact, earned a nickname based on his favorite drink: VoDkA. The name would stick for years.
While speech and drama gave me something to sink my passion into, they didn't solve the problems I was still having at school—or with my parents.
My grades at Columbine were as bad as—if not worse than—my grades from junior high. It wasn't because I couldn't do the work. It was because I
didn't
do the work. My grade point average got a boost from classes I enjoyed, like drama and debate, where I got A's. But in some other classes, like math, I was bored out of my mind and tuned things out. I did well on tests, but my grades still suffered because I didn't do the homework.
I didn't see a point in it, didn't want to waste my time on the busy-work that constituted most of our assignments. There was no reason to do it other than earning a grade, and I didn't care about the grade. I would only do homework if I thought I would get something out of it.
This attitude drove my parents crazy. They tried everything, from grounding me to speaking with my teachers, to trying to help me with homework. They also offered to let me change schools, since they knew I was unhappy at Columbine.
Part of me wanted to get out. The problem was that all my friends were at Columbine. I didn't want to leave them behind.
Of course, I was still very much into the punk and alternative crowd, and my parents didn't approve of that at all.
My parents never really understood why I hung out with some of the kids I did. I tried to explain that it was because they were the most independent kids in the school.
However, many of my friends in the punk crowd didn't come from very stable home environments. A few of them were pretty messed up. They would talk all the time about the problems they had at home. I wanted to fit in with these guys. So I started exaggerating my own problems. I would play up the pressure my parents put on me to get better grades. We were fighting all the time, and venting about those fights to my friends only aggravated my feelings.
I felt my parents weren't attempting to understand me. Instead, they were trying to “fix” me—to get me back to the way I was in grade school, before all of the crap with CHIPS and the junior high bullies and other unpleasantness. But you can't always fix other people. They have to fix themselves. My parents kept trying to push me back to what they saw as the best sort of life for me. When I would rebel, they would try to fix me more, and in turn I would become even more rebellious. It was a terrible spiral.
I would run away from home a lot, staying at my friends' houses in an effort to keep away from my parents. I resented them for pushing me to “buy into the system” and start getting good grades, or conform to what everyone thought I should be. They seemed to want me to play the game. I didn't want to do that, so I dropped out of the game altogether.
I had my driver's license by the end of sophomore year, so I was one of the first kids in my group of friends to have a car. Obviously this made me pretty popular as a ride-giver. My dad had given me an older car to drive, and, like a lot of kids when they first get their license, I treated it with no respect at all.
One time, after I'd been grounded, I left with the car anyway and picked up a few of my friends. My dad came looking for me, and pulled up next to me ordering me to go home. I refused.
“Go home right now, Brooks!” my dad shouted.
Since his car was sitting in front of mine, I threw my car into reverse and floored the gas. I wound up driving backwards through our neighborhood at what I can only describe as a ridiculous rate of speed; I'm lucky I didn't kill myself and everyone else in the car. Eventually I got myself turned around and sped away, and my dad decided we were going so fast that he wasn't going to bother chasing us.
I went through a pretty rough time, where I pushed my parents to the absolute limit. Today I realize how much they must have loved me, to put up with me through all of that.
Loving, involved parents are so important for a kid. I fought with my parents over some of the stupidest things. I feel really bad about that now. Because I know, today, how much they shaped me. And in the years that would follow, they would become a strong anchor that got me through my troubles with Eric and Dylan.
Eric never followed the rest of us into the theatre, or into any serious pursuit of extracurricular activities at Columbine. He remained engrossed in his computer. That was his outlet for the frustrations of school.
Eric and I were still riding the bus home together at the beginning of sophomore year, before I got my car. He lived close by, and the two of us would go over to his house and play video games.
One thing Eric was really into was coding levels for
Doom II.
That was one of the great things about
Doom II.
With most games, once you beat all of the levels, that's it; there's nothing left to do except play the levels you've already beaten, and that can get boring. But with
Doom II
,
you could buy a
Doom
editor that would actually allow you to design your own levels of the game, program them with as many enemies as you wanted, and then play them by yourself or with friends online. It was possible to program in your own types of enemies and your own sounds, move things around in existing levels, or build entire new worlds from scratch.
Eric loved the challenges the editing program presented. He loved programming and figuring out how to do things like matching textures or de-bugging a new level. He also liked creating challenges for his friends to beat. So when he created a new level, he'd invite me over to his house to give it a try.
I never built a
Doom
level myself, but Eric and I would sit around brainstorming ideas for them. It took a considerable amount of time to build a new
Doom
level from scratch, and even more time to work the bugs out.
Eric's early levels were small, like the ones he designed for “death-matching.” These levels didn't have any computer-controlled monsters running around; they were basically empty rooms with weapons hidden everywhere. Eric would get online with his computer, and Dylan or somebody else would log on with theirs, and the two players would enter this level and hunt each other down. Every time one player killed the other, it counted as one point. The first player to get ten points, or twenty, depending on how the scorekeeping was set up, won the match.
He'd often get creative; one level, called “Hockey,” was just that—opponents would chase each other down inside a hockey arena, complete with ice that your character would slide across if he walked on it. Another deathmatch level was based on
Mortal Kombat
, where there were no weapons and the two players would have to punch each other to death. Another level, which Eric simply called “Deathmatch in Bricks,” was a giant room with sweeping staircases, spikes, dark caves, a flowing river, and a maze. On the walls of the level, Eric had pasted in his own e-mail
address, so that if the level got traded to other players online, they could write to him with their thoughts.
However, as Eric's design skills improved, so did the complexity of his levels. By sophomore year, he showed me a complex two-level adventure called “UAC Labs.” Unlike the deathmatch levels, “UAC Labs” was a one-player challenge that involved fighting through a massive complex loaded with demons and enemy soldiers. In addition to designing the map of the level itself, Eric had reprogrammed a few features of the characters; I'm pretty sure that for one in particular he had sampled in the booming shriek of the monster from the movie
Predator
.
After the attack on Columbine, plenty of “experts” took aim at
Doom
and other games as “training ground” for Eric and Dylan. So there were a lot of people who wanted to get hold of the levels Eric designed, to see if there was any foreshadowing of the shootings to be found in them.