School Shootings and Bully Culture: or how friends and teachers helped me avoid becoming a school shooter

I know this may shock my friends, but when I was a child, I was a nerd. (Just joking, that won’t shock anyone.) I walked everywhere with a book open in front of me with my face buried in it. While others boys played baseball and football at recess, my crew had imaginary sword fights or got permission to stay in the library to play chess. We were the Dungeons & Dragons kids. The Avalon Hill war games players. We read Heinlein and Asimov and Dune and Tolkien, and then fantasized about living in those worlds. When our school got the first computers in 1979, we were the kids that sneaked into the school and spent hours typing in BASIC code from big news print magazines one of the kids’ fathers would bring us from a store in Detroit. The kids everyone loved to ridicule and abuse. I was pushed, kicked, knocked down, spit on, had my lunch tray dumped, or had milk poured on my lunch tray.  So were my friends. Kids stole my glasses and played keep away with them. I hated every minute of school. Often the teachers either tolerated or actively participated in my humiliation. 

When Columbine happened, and the media began listing all the reasons that everyone “should have seen the signs” I was astonished by how many of “the signs” they could have seen among me and my friends. I shared a locker with another D&D nerd who wore army surplus camouflage pants and kept a stack of Soldier of Fortune magazines in our locker. We stole chemicals from the school and made explosives at his house. We "borrowed" guns from parents and went adventuring in the woods. And when we played modern era role playing games (Top Secret was a favorite), there were several scenarios that involved which of the school bullies we would kill and how they would die. True story.

But already at that point, I had a few things going on for me that “Columbine-proofed” me.

I found something I loved (ballet) and built an alternative universe where, if I could just make it to 3 PM, I could go to the dance studio and be among people who shared my passions and praised me as a talented human being. While becoming a dancer made EVERYTHING worse on the bullying front, it also gave me confidence that I had previously lacked and physical strength that cut short many future potential acts of physical aggression against me.  (One of the great dangers of Cyber Bullying is that where I left my bullies behind at 3 PM, the bullies now follow their victims any where they have their phone.)

I had a few AMAZING teachers who sought me out and frequently “talked me off the ledge” when things were more than I could handle. More than anyone else, those teachers made my life worth living. I’ve named them before, but Christine Morgan, a 7th grade English teacher in Imlay City, Michigan, who put up her own prize money to encourage creative writing, Frances Becker, who taught an amazing speed reading class where she challenged us to “explore our full human potential”, and most of all Kathy Hanewicz (now Navarro) who challenged me and inspired me and held me to an entirely different standard than her other students. (Yes, that would be an A+ for anyone else, but Gary you aren’t LIKE anyone else!) When I moved to Ohio, teachers like my Spanish teacher, James Ferrell and our choir director, Debra Bringman, were amazing at supporting me and students like me.

I had adult friends from my church denomination who poured time into me and (other youth) and listened to my problems. The Youth Leadership Corps took kids on weekend encounters where adults taught us leadership and coping skills and challenged us to be leaders.

I also had some amazing friends ... those who accepted my nerd culture friends as fellow humans deserving of basic human dignity. Who were or could have been in the “in crowd” but chose to spend part of their time befriending and protecting me and my friends. Ken Taylor in Imlay City, and Doug Stankus in Tipp City, thank you to both of you! Your friendship and protection mattered more than you could ever know! Later, I tried to do the same for others.

Both of my children were horribly bullied in school as well. My son’s redemption came about similarly to mine. He went from a sports-jock private school where he was verbally and physically bullied almost daily, to the Alabama School of the Fine Arts, where individuality is celebrated and praised and his musical wizardry won him the praise and acclaim of teachers and audiences, building his confidence and helping make him the amazing man he is today. 

My daughter’s bullying unfortunately caused the opposite potential outcome. Cyber bullying to her was filled with threats of physical violence and rape AT SCHOOL as bullies declared her individuality to be invalid and worthy of their contempt. Her world and her friends became darker and darker as she avoided the horrible and fear-enduring place that school was to her and embraced music that celebrated rebellion, killing, and suicide as ways of dealing with being an outcast. She found friends who embraced her as well, but usually her friends were suffering in similar ways and drugs and despair led her to suicide and we lost her and all of her vast human potential at age 19.

Like many school shooters, my daughter reached a point where her life to date had been largely marked by suffering and abuse at the hands and words of others. She looked at her present and her near future, and couldn't envision a future that had a different outcome than the disappointing place she was currently in. When the past and present have sucked, and the future looks no different, a school shooter decides "So I'm going to get some revenge on my way out."  Colombine (1999), University of Arizona (2002), Red Lake (2005), West Nickel (2006), Virginia Tech (2007), Colorado Springs (2007), Northern Illinois University (2008), Sandy Hook (2012), Isla Vista (2013), Marysville (2014), Umpqua Community College (2015), and Aztec High (2017) all ended in a suicide! When the goal is DO DAMAGE AND THEN DIE, knowing that someone there is armed and ready to defend the children is not a disincentive at all.

We talk about Mental Illness and Restricting Gun Sales, but what about Friendship? What about breaking the cycle of bullying, not just because it is the right thing to do -- but because it will SAVE LIVES! Whether by preventing a shooting, or preventing a quiet suicide at home by a miserable and lonely teenager. We have to address this culture of bullying that says to kids YOU ARE DIFFERENT AND WORTHY OF MY CONTEMPT AND ABUSE! Where children gather around and make Instagram videos of people being bullied, rather than jumping into the fray and stopping it, as my childhood friend Ken Taylor did for me several times in Imlay City, Michigan. Where instead of teachers mocking the outcast, as happened so many times to me at the hands of miserable teachers, a teacher gives the student that extra encouragement, that extra challenge, that extra time, that extra recognition.

If you are serious about wanting to stop school shootings and violence, instead of protesting the NRA and ranting on Facebook, what about finding a worthwhile program for investing your time and attention to the kids in a local high school or junior high? Take whatever thing you are passionate about and find a way to connect to today's kids about it. But make sure to watch out for the kid on the edge. The outcast needs more than ever to know that there is someone who cares about him. Someone who can help them build a self-narrative that has a path towards a success and a future. For me that is based on computers, because that is where I eventually found my narrative to success. (That's why I'm encouraging my fellow computer nerds to get involved with TEALSK12.org -- spend time in your local schools helping kids learn more about computers!) But whether you volunteer with your local TEALS program, or volunteer as a tutor, or find a way to help youngsters who are the creative ones, the authors and the poets and the musicians and the dancers and musicians and dancers.  (Sponsor a prize for creative writing, volunteer with your school's drama club or school newspaper, but get involved!) For whatever reason, the more creative kids are the ones that are more likely to be on the outside - to be unaccepted, unwelcomed, bullied, and abused. Help them to know that someone cares about them as a person and help them find their path through the misery of the school years into a future where they are valued.

That's how we will stop school shootings. Instead of ignoring the bullied and abused and ignored and outcast, find a way to be part of changing their lives!