Category: Uncategorized

I’m not sure if it’s because we all know what happens a few days after prom but the clearer picture you shared of Dylan and Robyn shows this look in eyes so much more and I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe I’m projecting? It’s haunting though. Something about his eyes that just looks so done and kind of sad.

I think the newspaper article printed a little bit distorted so his eyes are sort of idk, double exposed? and they look a bit larger and weirder.   Here’s another version of the photo.  Robyn was posing and looking at whoever had the camera and in the smidge of a second this was snapped, Dylan was distracted and looking off into the distance. It’s difficult to say if we’re reading into a haunting expression in his eyes or just Dylan wide-eyed distracted while in motion, in between snaps. 

The Beginning  of the  End
    January 30, 1998  – 20 years ago today

“On January 30, a few days after Dylan scratched the locker at school in his junior year, he and Eric were arrested for breaking into a parked van and stealing electronic equipment.

I began, “Dylan. Help me understand this. How could you do something so morally wrong?” He opened his mouth to answer, and I cut him off. I said, “Wait. Wait a minute. First, tell me what happened. Tell me everything, right from the beginning.”

What he’d done was wrong, and I wanted him to know it. Appealing to his empathy, I asked him how he’d feel if someone stole from him. “Dylan, if you follow no other rules in your life, at least follow the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal.” I paused to consider which of the other commandments might have relevance and then decided to stop haranguing him. “Those are rules to live by.” He said, “I know that.”

We sat in silence for a little while. Then I said, “Dyl, you’re scaring me. How can I be sure you’ll never do such a thing again?” He said he didn’t know, and seemed frightened to learn he could do something so bad on an impulse. He was obviously miserable. I felt no anger at that point, only compassion.”  – Sue Klebold, “A Mother’s Reckoning”

“Dylan was absolutely embarrassed, hardcore, he was ashamed of his arrest to a degree that just made him snap. His life was over with that arrest. He felt he could never get a job or be trusted by his family again. The arrest had a deep saddening effect on his life. They wanted revenge on the cops for arresting them in January ’98 because that ruined them on so many personal levels.”
– CEE

Was the TCM a group of misfits? How did you get ‘accepted’ into the group? Were they the unpopular people of Columbine? Did anyone in the TCM socialise with people outside their ‘clique’? Was the TCM ‘popular’ around the school for being unpopular? Thank you queen. Sending love, anon

Was the TCM a group of misfits?   Well, if by ‘misfits’ you also mean outcasts which didn’t fit in with the vibe of the majority of their school with it’s sport and christian obsessed culture, than yes, misfits is what they were. 🙂 

How did you get ‘accepted’ into the group?  It was an informal group with no real rules or formalities.  Ya know, they basically were a bunch of computer geeks that hung out and played cards, D&D, Magic, video games, shot pool, bowled, had mock sword fights occasionally. Once, a couple of them started wearing black trench coats (actually Australian dusters), one of the jocks noticed they wore their coats even when it was 80 degrees outside and so they yelled out “who do you think you are anyway, the trench coat mafia or something?’” The geeks coveted that mock name the jocks dubbed them and from then on, they were the Trenchcoat Mafia, the antithesis of Jock culture and all things rebelling and resisting it.  Those nerds that were in the same circle of friends at this time (96-98) became the TCM founding members and friends that associated with them could be automatically accepted by those original members probably as informally as ‘hey, dude, can I join the TCM?”  ‘sure, you’re cool”.   This was not a club or fraternity with hazing rituals and whatnot. It was just a loose clique that stood out as outcasts, going against the grain and marching to the beat of their own drum, in contrast to the rest of the vanilla, conservative, sports crazy school. 

Did anyone in the TCM socialise with people outside their ‘clique’?  Sure they did. CHS was close to 2K students. After all, it was a social group, a ‘clique’ and not a cult. 😉  And their were not that many members – no more than about 10-12 at it’s peak during ‘97-98.

Was the TCM ‘popular’ around the school for being unpopular?   
You hit the nail on the head.  That about sums it up. Nemeses of the jocks.

Thank you for sending love, precious anon, 🙂   Returning the ❤

my-sisters-bike:

Death. (Afraid?)

A page from Dylan Klebold’s planner, which includes a to-do list for the massacre on Columbine he was planning with Eric Harris.

Of course, this page is done in complete Dylan style – “Armed Forces Day” edited to have four exclamation points after it, and arrows pointing at the to-do list. The list was also written on a page that says, “OPTIMISM” at the very top. 

Dyl and his black humor. Boom. There we are.