Devon thought Tom Klebold was “very fair-minded.” “Like one time, Dylan came in two hours past curfew and Dylan had promised to be in on curfew – it may have been midnight – and his dad got really angry at him and I think he took away Dylan’s keyboard for two days, to his computer, and Dylan loved that computer. Just made it totally not possible to use the computer for two days, but it was fair punishment. I can’t remember his parents ever grounding him. They just said you have to be in an hour early or something like that cause I think his parents knew how important Dylan’s friends were to him.”
His senior year Dylan gave Devon rides home at least once a week when her boyfriend (Zack Heckler) couldn’t do it. Devon paid Dylan $5 out of her own pocket but told him the money was from her mom because Dylan wouldn’t want to take her money. On those drives home, they talked about school, teachers and the swamp man toy that hung from his rear view mirror and spurted water out the mouth if you pressed the stomach.
Six months before Columbine, Dylan and Devon were at a friend’s house watching a movie when kids next door shined a laser light on them. Dylan, Devon, and their friend snuck up on the kids and flashed a halogen lamp in the window. “So we were proud of ourselves because we conquered over the little fifth graders,” Devon recounts. They rounded out the night “spaze dancing,” jumping up and down and listening to KMFDM or Nine Inch Nails. “he’s either really hyper or really kicked back,” Devon adds. In a photo, Dylan looked stoned as he flashes two thumbs up, but Devon assures that was not the case. “I’m straight-edge [drug-free] and he knew it, so he didn’t do anything around me,” she explains.
Dylan by that time had long hair that dropped below his ears and streamed out of his baseball cap, about the same way he looked the day of Columbine. His favorite shirt was dark green with white lettering that read, “AOL: WheRe KewLz HaXORz ArE.” Translation: “AOL: Where Cool Hackers Are.” Explanation: It’s a joke because it’s easy to hack on AOL.
One of Dylan’s favorite gifts to Devon was $10 cash. One time, Devon fell in love with an anteater Beanie Baby. Dylan hated Beanie Babies but for Christmas 1998, four months before Columbine, he bought her one that was gray, white and black. “Needless to say, I’ve collected anteaters ever since,” she says. After Columbine, she toted the Beanie Baby across the country when she spoke on gun control alongside Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was killed at Columbine. Devon thinks the anteater is good luck because it gives her confidence. “You know, ‘cause, in the line of what I do, the gun control stuff, I get discouraged, because there’s a lot of opposition, there’s a lot of people who aren’t willing to listen. And I’m remembering just why I’m doing it. To keep those guns out of the hands of another kid like Dylan who, I don’t know, feels he has no other way out, or something. Just keep him from having access to that deadly weapon.”
-excerpt: Columbine A True Crime Story – Jeff Kass
The Everlasting Contrast 