Columbine survivor opens her backpack for the first time since the day of the shooting

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Yep, that schedule you looked at on the first day of classes and then shoved in your bag all year until the last day before summer break, when you threw it away. Half finished notes done mostly to make it look like I was paying attention when a teacher was looking. Dented, ripped, and collapsed binders. Backpacks tossed about so much they looked like something from a war.

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DonDada777@reddit

The day Columbine happened I found and chatted with a random girl from the school on ICQ chat. She spoke about how she knew the two guys and some of the victims. It was surreal.

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_Notebook_@reddit

There were several rumors of “threats” made at our school and the rumors got so big that all the kids did a walk-out half way through the day because they thought the adults were hiding it from us.

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drudman6@reddit

Wow.

I remember the day, I watched it all live on cable.

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elliemff@reddit

I just remember thinking everything would change and then… yeah. The only change was that my school banned trench coats.

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The_Best_Yak_Ever@reddit

I watched it on tv as a freshman, but our district didn’t change anything in reaction. We were the same social economic makeup as Columbine’s district, and as far as I know, had no threats or anything credible to change anything.

By the time my senior year and 9/11, rolled around, I remember being really shocked at how dramatically everything shifted in response to that. But for what was a surreal and horrific event, in cable news coverage of a shooting/ attempted bombing of columbine high school, not a lot changed in my town.

Even now, where we’ve had different attacks, during Covid, we actually lost our resource officers in the school district I work in as a psychologist. That blew me away, as we actually have had threats in my district. But apparently having security was too expensive =-(

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SanchoPliskin@reddit

Yo! My school too!!!

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Accurate-Temporary73@reddit

I got talked to by my high vide principal. He told he that he can’t control what I wear and they weren’t banning trench coats but he also said it might be nice to not make students scared.

I never stopped wearing it, i wore a trench coat all the time and as far as i know, nobody at school cared

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thesmellnextdoor@reddit

My school's trenchies stopped wearing them voluntarily for a couple of days out of respect.

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C0BRA_V1P3R@reddit

My high school ended up banning backpacks and had us go through metal detectors.

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mrmadchef@reddit

Mine tried forcing us all to get either mesh or clear backpacks. In a blue collar town, where your backpack most likely had to last you several years (I had the same one all through high school) most parents were NOT having it. The compromise was they had to stay in our lockers during the day (we'd previously been able to have them with us during the day).

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OhSoSolipsistic@reddit

How’d you carry all your shit? My backpack still goes everywhere with me, I’d revolt if anyone tried to ban it.

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C0BRA_V1P3R@reddit

My high school had block scheduling where we had a homeroom and then alternated between the other six classes (2, 4, 6 periods one day and 3, 5, 7 periods the next), so I didn’t have to carry around a ton of books every day.

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noblewind@reddit

My school also banned trench coats. An honors student was nearly suspended for doing finger guns at her friend. Not even pew pew level just the index finger point. TBF, I guess, my state had a school shooting (Jonesboro,AR) before Columbine so I think Admin was even more on edge.

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Capt_accident@reddit

Same, wasn’t allowed a trench coat for a year. But I wore something similar that they didn’t complain about.

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fourofkeys@reddit

we had to wear student ids.

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Neither_Internal_261@reddit

Same. I was not at school that day but instead at my grandmas house and we watched the whole thing. Wild to be able to know what I was doing while she was writing down her school work. What an absolute fcked up situation.

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MandyLee77@reddit

Same i was a first time Mom and was 22 when this happened.

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_buffy_summers@reddit

A couple of guys I was friends with were making jokes, and I lost it and asked them what they thought they would do if we were in that situation. We were seniors. They both got quiet and said they wouldn't handle it well. I felt a little bad for that, and I understand more now that they were just as scared as I was, and they were using humor to mask it. I think that was what made me stop wanting to attend school unless I absolutely had to. I ditched a lot, those last few weeks.

About fifteen years later, my daughter was in kindergarten when her school went into lockdown. Nobody there was in any actual danger, but a kid in a nearby town had called in a threat to their high school, and my town's school system took precautions. We lived across the street from the school at the time, and all of the parents had received a text saying not to come get our kids. So I couldn't do anything all day except stare out the window and wait.

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the_one_jt@reddit

And now you learn what happened in Uvaldi. Honestly I don't ask my government to protect me. I have rights and I don't give those away for a false sense of freedom from some "dangerous" illegals.

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onions-make-me-cry@reddit

Same. I had started a new job the day before. I came home from work and this shit was on the news. Horrible. My little sister was a high school senior.

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kellyk311@reddit

Yeah. It was insane.

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DirectorLanky466@reddit

I do too!! And then school changed forever!! One of the main 2 major events of our childhood. (The other being 9/11)

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gloebe10@reddit

I remember being on a field trip at the Detroit institute of art. Somehow we heard about it there.

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76@reddit

That was my senior year and I was actually in Colorado at a choir festival the day it happened. We were watching it live while it was going on just a few miles away. I lived in NM so it hit pretty close to home.

We all wondered who among our cohort might do something like that.

Nearly 20 years later there was a shooting at my high school.

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kalitarios@reddit

I graduated in 96, this was pretty much spot on. As a guy I didn’t have notes, but a trapper keeper full of rules and graph paper, all the pencils and pens shoved into the front pocket. There was no less than 40 pounds worth of books at all times.

Back in 92-96 it was uncool to wear both straps, so that LL Bean strap was the hero if the bag, having to sling 40+ pounds in my right sholder all over because using the locker was also seen as “nerdy” and uncool.

Don’t know why it was uncool; it just was. If a kid had both straps on, they got the top hand strap yanked so hard they would fall backwards.

If you carried your books you risked getting a “book job” in the hall. That’s when someone would reach across the hall and swat your arms up towards the ceiling, sending everything flying.

You had to keep your head on a swivel in the hall. Sure it was 150 feet to the next class but it was a warzone of social landmines. God fobid you bumped an upperclassman. It was fight on sight

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makeupwearsoff@reddit

My daughter is 7 and insists it’s cooler to wear her backpack on one arm. I’m always trying to explain why it’s so bad for her back, as if I wasn’t that kid lmao

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cafeteriastyle@reddit (OP)

Yeah you HAD to only use one shoulder for your backpack. It seems so silly now but we took that shit seriously

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realitythreek@reddit

I honestly still feel needy unless I wear a backpack on one shoulder.

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imsaneinthebrain@reddit

“I would no strap it if I could”

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cupcakebean@reddit

The first time I saw a group of teenagers using BOTH straps, I did a double take and thought they were dorks. Then I realized how out of touch I am with the youths.

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imtooldforthishison@reddit

O also graduated in 96 and I had a newborn (11 days old) at this point and I remember thinking "oh my god, what kind of world did I just bring this baby into?" and its just gotten so much worse. My youngest is the same age as the Sandy Hook children and I got home that day and he'd found som jingle bells on under the couch or something and he rushed into the garage to show me and again "What kind of world did I bring these kids into,!"

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CantaloupeAsleep502@reddit

I have a minor scoliosis because of this precise phenomenon you described.

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Pineapple_Towel@reddit

They used ask you if you were a paperboy (before that was a job for alcoholic crackheads) at scoliosis screen times.

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GrumpyOldHistoricist@reddit

My shoulders are visibly asymmetrical and I blame carrying a backpack like this during my developmental years.

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rob132@reddit

Same. There was no time to go to the locker so you had to put all your books in your book bag. two shoulder on the straps were not allowed.

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sarabridge78@reddit

I mean, as a girl(also class of '96) I also one strapped the backpack, but carrying books did not come with such dire consequences. Especially since sophomore year the home ecs teacher tripped over someone's backpack during class, broke her arm, and the entire school had to go backpack free.

The hallway was less of a war zone for me getting physically attacked by upperclassmen, but way more so of getting sexually harassed by boys of all classes.

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TuckerCarlsonsOhface@reddit

That scene in 21 Jump Street movie about number of backpack straps cracked me up.

“Seriously, I would no-strap it if that would even be possible”

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welsh_cthulhu@reddit

Her voice is unbearable.

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FidgitForgotHisL-P@reddit

Did American kids not carrying any food with them? Did you just get everything at your cafeterias?

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PoisonMind@reddit

She explained she had a box of Lunchables in there, but already threw them away.

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TrixieBastard@reddit

Many students do, yeah.

Also, the kids who brought lunch from home usually kept it in their lockers until lunchtime to prevent their meal from getting smashed flat by textbooks.

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FidgitForgotHisL-P@reddit

Lunch boxes were not ok? (I mean this sincerely, like would that just pushing you for massive bullying?)

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TrixieBastard@reddit

Now that you mention it, I can't think of a single student in middle school or high school that had a hard-sided lunchbox, at least as far as I ever saw. 🤔 You either had a soft-sided lunchbox that wouldn't do anything to protect your meal, a brown paper lunch bag, or you just carried your items separately.

So yeah, a rigid plastic lunchbox probably would have gotten you bullied back then (I graduated in 2000, so I'm pretty much the same age as the woman in the video)

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guyincognito121@reddit

I would just drive to a nearby restaurant and get lunch. Why would I carry food around all day?

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BuffOrange@reddit

Either that or brown bag in the locker. Which in retrospect seems pretty gross.

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brattybabyc@reddit

There’s a guy named Zac on TikTok who also survived Columbine.

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4imprint-Certain@reddit

I was in middle school that day. They has moved everyone into the school auditorium. And then made all the parents come pick us up like it freaked out our little town.

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HereWeFuckingGooo@reddit

I'm curious how she continued school without all her notes and calculator.

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Accomplished-Run221@reddit

This feels like prostitution. I can’t watch a person debase themselves over something so horrific.

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

Agree. I don’t know who this person is or if she regularly does influencer stuff. But I find it hard to believe you ignore this backpack for 25 years and then just randomly decide to look at the contents while streaming 27 years later. Is nothing sacred?

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Accomplished-Run221@reddit

Hi Fam! Today I’m going to walk through the space where a slew of my classmates were murdered! Want to come with? Smash that Like button and don’t forget to subscribe!

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

I mean even if she had said “I’ve kept this backpack and it’s contents intact all these years because it was a defining day in my life, let me show you what’s in it” without the whole pretending ‘I’ve been too devastated to even look at it on single time for 30 years but now I’m just going to talk about lip gloss and schedules’ I’d feel better about it.

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spaltavian@reddit

Good thing you're here to tell a shooting survivor how she should act.

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

We all have trauma. And we are told to go to therapy about it not make everyone else listen to it 27 years later. But mainly, she’s not even talking about her trauma she’s taking about luo gloss and powder and hoping we will care because it’s trauma porn.

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spaltavian@reddit

Who fucking cares

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

“Here’s what I wore and what was in my purse when I escaped the twin towers” told with a smile on your face. You don’t find it a little weird?

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spaltavian@reddit

No, I find you weird. This is an incredibly stupid thing to care about and carry on about over multiple messages. Who fucking cares.

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

Ok. You can keep saying “who fucking cares” but it’s still trauma porn. People who are into trauma porn might care. Some of us don’t. You’ve told me “who fucking cares” like 3 times. You know that’s doesnt really give off “I don’t care” vibes, right?

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OatmealCookieCrust@reddit

If you watched the video she doesn’t say that this is the first time she’s opened it in 27 years. She in fact implies that she regularly looks at it and is trauma bonded to the contents.

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

I have many trauma bonded items I don’t need to share with the internet. Or I can share my cool retro items without tying them to the trauma.

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dlm4849@reddit

Yeah, maybe that makes us cynical, but my initial reaction was the same. It’s hard to not look at anything that comes through social media that’s engagement driven without a million grains of salt.

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NoContextCarl@reddit

It's crazy I had to scroll this far for a grounded take. This is weird and exploitative.

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rythmicjea@reddit

I live in Denver and this makes me nauseous. The city NEVER does any big remembrance for it. But it's like "ooo let's go through my backpack from the day one of the worst high school tragedies occurred! Don't forget to like, share, and follow!"

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StevieNickedMyself@reddit

Wild. I was in college then with an inner ear infection. Sick on the couch and I remember really wanting to watch "Buffy" but it was pre-empted due to a school shooting in the episode. Don't think they'd do the same nowadays.

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Same_Bug5069@reddit

I was out of sick for a few days that week and remember the news coverage. Crazy that similar incidents now barely last more than a day or two before attention moves onto to something else because how common mass shootings are now...

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cafeteriastyle@reddit (OP)

I think there were 4 mass shootings in the US in the past 48 hours and no one is taking about them

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SignificantRecipe715@reddit

As an Aussie, the number of US school shootings that never make a blip on the news is fucking wild. And incredibly sad :(

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Savingskitty@reddit

Most mass shootings here aren’t school shootings.

Shootings like they had at Columbine are actually pretty rare.

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Zagmut@reddit

I read about the Louisiana shooting this morning, on two separate news sites.

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Mindless_Flower_2639@reddit

"He said Elkins had been known to police and was arrested in 2019 in a firearms case."

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Same_Bug5069@reddit

So depressing...

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rdhdboi767@reddit

Just heard about the eight people getting killed in Shreveport, Louisiana smh.

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Mac_A81@reddit

8 children. Between the ages of 1 and 14. So heartbreaking.

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Same_Bug5069@reddit

I bet its out of the news by the end of the week

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Same_Bug5069@reddit

So sad. Left the states 10 years ago for this and many other reasons.

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kaiswil2@reddit

I'm gonna call bs.

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DrankTooMuchMead@reddit

Columbine was such a big deal to us, and Xennials were getting school shootings every week there for awhile.

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Deep-Interest9947@reddit

No we weren’t? That’s the last few decades, not before. But

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Double-Tradition413@reddit

I’m sorry you experienced this.

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MundaneWiley@reddit

Surreal to see a school shoot unboxing video

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unoriginal1187@reddit

We had to leave our book bags in lockers but a kid who fit the stereotype of a school shooter decided when we got sent to a private school for a month for repairs to our public school that it would be fun to call in a bomb threat. The schools response to said bomb threat was pile us all in the gym.

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voujon85@reddit

how did she have notes from May if the bag was sealed

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BuyInHigh@reddit

I got caught with the Anarchist Cookbook not long after that in school in Louisiana. It went bad for me.

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cherryberry0611@reddit

Writing things down help you retain the information, and now kids hardly have to write any work down. They really screwed kids over by making buy using laptops.

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spaltavian@reddit

I just stole an extra copy of each textbook and hid them in the classroom. Left the set assigned to me at home. Never carried a bookbag, just had a pen, maybe a notebook.

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Nonametousehere1@reddit

Not possible -the paper she shows says: class of 2000,2001 2002...and then her schedule has the date of 12/2 at the top. Columbine was 1999.so this was after Columbine.

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Howboutit85@reddit

I remember when students had readable handwriting too. What a time.

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zrouse@reddit

Oh my god vocab workshop kill me

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crudstain@reddit

Yeah, that unlocked a memory! I was well into college by '99 but we definitely rocked those vocab books in the early '90s too.

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guyincognito121@reddit

I was a senior and my high school was determined by some researcher to be the most demographically similar to Columbine in the country. So like a week later we had several journalists from big publications interviewing students, taking pictures, etc. There was a picture of me playing basketball in gym class in Newsweek.

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RobotCaptainEngage@reddit

That lip gloss container gave me severe nostalgia.

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GDRaptorFan@reddit

Me too! And My mom sold Avon so I totally always had lotions and what not like that from Avon.

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thunderlips36@reddit

That would be such a fun time capsule if it wasn't tied to that event. I'm sure it was still fun to go through but the reason it remained untouched is just awful

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noblewind@reddit

She's stronger than me. If I still had that it would be in the back of a closet and I'd try to pretend it didn't exist.

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Complete_Bird1843@reddit

Yeah let’s unpack that trauma for likes and clicks lololol.

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imisscigs@reddit

Schools are supposed to be a safer space man. Can we go back to the before times when people didnt have to worry about drones, missiles, or shooters? Feels like everything the government is doing is making things worse.

Why cant we elect a hardline anti-gun rights candidate? The guns dont have feelings, but they have more rights to exist in America than some people do. We don’t need to hunt to eat anymore. Guns are for war and death. Eww.

Mandatory weapons safety training/id/registration/security seems like kind of a basic minimal thing. Some places make you get permission first. Others require armory storage. Im sure there are tons of other ways to add layers and make this shit less accessible for public safety.

It sucks that society keeps having to have this conversation.

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Pineapple_Towel@reddit

What I really hated was having to respect Christianity after this.

Fuck you you stupid god lovers.

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afleetingmoment@reddit

Oh man - the "Vocabulary Workshop" books were omnipresent for me from I think 6th to 10th grade. I actually enjoyed that part of English class... something tangible and memorizable.

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Stardustquarks@reddit

I still have and use that same calculator…

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afleetingmoment@reddit

I have it too. If I recall, there was a certain standardized test where you couldn't bring the graphing calculator (because of the memory capabilities) and the TI-30xa was the recommended alternate.

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Turbomattk@reddit

My wife still has that same calculator

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rml24601@reddit

I gasped when she showed the schedule - hadn’t seen or thought of one of those since, well, ‘99! But that’s the same print out I used in the 90s.

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vacantseas81@reddit

Same here

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CeleryintheButt@reddit

Like a week after Columbine in my creative writing class I wrote a short story about a bank robbery. I was suspended for a week and had to have 3 therapists sessions before returning to school.

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UrthFyre@reddit

I was in 10th grade when that happened. Me and my friends were "the weird kids" of the very small school we went to and all wore metal band T-shirts and trench coats. They ended up having a town meeting about us because we were "scary". Mind you, none of us ever started any shit and were routinely assaulted both on and off school grounds by the jocks and popular kids. But somehow, we were the problem.

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umlaut@reddit

Buddy of mine wore a trench coat and we both got called in to talk with the school counselor to make sure we weren't going to shoot up the school

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doduotrainer@reddit

Of course they did this to the weird kids even though the Columbine shooters were bullies and not the ones being bullied

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furryass@reddit

Fake?

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Apprehensive_Hat8986@reddit

No need. If it wasn't Columbine, there's literally hundreds (thousands?) of other incidents that someone else could speak from. Also, if this is fake, the Hollywood should hire this woman, because that is absolutely perfect prop-work.

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General_Departure583@reddit

Wow! This is really sad and interesting. I still remember watching this on channel 1 in my homeroom in 99 in the days that followed. Columbine and 9/11 changed everything. I greatly appreciate her bravery for sharing

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cafeteriastyle@reddit (OP)

Oh man Channel 1. I forgot about that

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TryFine317@reddit

1980

Wow, that was powerful. 😞

I was finishing my freshman year of college when Columbine happened. I also remember thinking this would change things. Unfortunately, on an April day at my college (then alma mater) eight years later, another horrific tragedy.

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pickoneforme@reddit

we had that exact vocab book at my school.

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Defiant-Difference17@reddit

Yup. I had it in 7th grade... 92/93

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cordelaine@reddit

Yep, same here!

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ATRavenousStorm@reddit

My binder (and later my planner) was covered in DBZ characters. Ahhh memories...

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Mick_Limerick@reddit

That fucking vocab book. I had the same one and honestly they were very effective. My district started using those books in the 6th grade and they went all the way thru 12. Started with level F and ended at Level A

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GeetarEnthusiast85@reddit

I remember going into school the next day completely oblivious to what had transpired the day before. Some girls who sat behind me were talking about it and I heard one of them mention "trench coat mafia". I thought they were talking about something from The Sopranos. I'll never forget the looks of utter confusion on their faces when I started asking them about it.

Two years later in high school, we started doing "active shooter drills".

Un related but two years later, 9/11 happened. I remember my dad and I attended a New Jersey Devils hockey game and we, along with every other attendee were patted down by a security guard before being allowed to enter the building. I remember my dad muttering "So, this is what it's come to."

Sometimes it astounds me all that we've witnessed (so far). We're the generation that has truly experienced immense changes that were not necessarily for the better.

And we're the last ones to remember what it was like before.

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rojoshow13@reddit

This isn't nearly as interesting as she thinks it is. Maybe in September she can open her backpack from 2001.

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StNic54@reddit

First year of college for me. I remember my buddy showing me the AOL profile of one of the shooters, and then when we went to access it to show someone else, the profile was taken down. It was a really tough time because I knew what it was like to get picked on in school and be angry, but I couldn’t understand the lengths these two would go to in order to hurt others. That level of apathy was foreign to me, and our generation has watched the years unfold with numbness as each subsequent mass casualty happens all over the US

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ForzaFenix@reddit

Yep. Very On brand. I was a junior in HS when that happened.

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erinhannon321@reddit

Wow, bringing back lots of memories and I used that foundation in the second compact for years! It was cover girl I think and was supposed to be a “liquid powder”.