A Teenager's View of Littleton

Subject: 18-yr-old essayist's insight into the Colorado shooting
"From Where I Stand: A Teenager's Voice from Inside the Culture of   Death"

     On April 20, 1999, there was yet another gruesome shooting in Littleton, Colorado. Kids killing kids.  And again, the entire nation in its uproar is trying to figure out why.  I am eighteen years old.  I live in a small town near Madison, Wisconsin.  A small town just like the ones where these horrifying shootings always seem to take place. Every time those stories come on the television, I can't help but notice how easily it could be my small town next. And I want to know why this is happening just as badly as any parent or police chief or anchorman.  The thing is, I am right in the middle of it.  I am in the same age group as all of these high school kids.  So I may have some insight for the world that has been otherwise unattainable since these shootings started some years ago.

    The night of the Littleton shooting, as I was flipping through the various news channels that were covering the story in Littleton, Colorado, I heard something that struck a chord in me.  An anchorman was interviewing the mother of a victim in the  Jonesboro shooting.  His question was: "If you look at America in the 1950's, you will find that this kind of thing never happened; whereas if you look at America today, this kind of thing is becoming more and more frequent. Why do you think this is happening?"

    The woman, of course, could not answer the question.  In fact, she didn't really even try. But I did. I thought about it for a long time that night.   And again the next morning, when my favorite morning radio talk show asked its listeners why they thought this has been happening.  Many people said it's the parents of the kids.  Many people suggested television and video games.  Many people even turned to popular musicians, looking to put the blame somewhere.

    But I will tell you what I think it is.  What I, a regular teenager riding on the coattails of Generation X, blame it on. It is not the parents or the movies or the rock stars.  It is AMERICA.  It is this culture of death, this culture in which liberals and feminists and activists are so anxious to let anything be "OK" that the once tightened, knotted rope of society is unraveling right beneath us.

    Don't you see?  There can be no order without discipline.   All of those things people think are causing children to run into a school and shoot their teachers and peers and even kids they don't know—the movies, the video games, the parents, the rap artists—they are only REFLECTIONS of our society.   Society breaks down, from one big metaphoric "family" into 50 metaphoric "families" and so on and so on, until you have the actual FAMILY, the one with the parents and the kids and the dog.  It is not one thing or two things; it is the attitude of an entire "familiar" nation being reflected back at us in the kids.

    Just as that anchorman suggested, something was different about the 1950's.  WE WERE CONSERVATIVE.  We had boundaries; we had a definite knowledge of right and wrong throughout the entire nation.  We didn't have feminists pushing women so hard to go get a job that a woman who didn't have a job was somehow "bad," thereby leaving kids at home with inadequate parental guidance and often times with parents who were truly unhappy.  We didn't have liberals fighting so avidly to legalize everything that it was at the point of completely blurring the line between good and bad.  We didn't have a nationwide media surge dedicated to sex and violence so intense that if you weren't playing killing video games at age 14, then you were trying to choose between contraceptives beforehand or abortion afterwards.  We didn't have disputes over whether or not we should help someone who is dying die sooner—over whether or not we should ASSIST them in committing SUICIDE.  And we certainly didn't have a President who was in favor of NATO bombing and killing children in Serbia come on the television to grieve the loss for the families of children killed in America.

    We live in a loosely tied society, a culture dedicated to death.   If you don't want the kid, kill it.  If you don't want to live out the rest of your God-given days, kill yourself.  Or better yet, have someone else come help you do it.  I guess, no matter how horrible or gruesome or gut-wrenching it may be, it was just a matter of time before someone got that "killing-as-a-means-to-an-end" idea stuck in their head for the part between birth and death as well.  Everything that happens in families and cities and states and countries is the mirror image of the big picture. We are falling apart as a society.  Am I—some random normal teenager in Farmertown, U.S.A.—the only one who sees that?  It's sad and it's hard to believe, but what's worse is that it's scary.

    I think it's time for our--America's--Mom and Dad to ground us--to say, "If you don't shape up by the time I count to three," And then really count to three.  Because we are running wild and pretty soon we're going to be too far from home to ever get back.

    There was once a great saying by a famous man that has rung true throughout the history of mankind—in every family and in every society and in every social group and in every religion—it was a frighteningly true statement that cannot be disputed.  I am reminded of it now, in the wake of yet another indescribably tormenting result of a nation gone haywire... "By their fruits you shall know them."

by Sarah Roney
April 21, 1999