No. The Klebold’s house in the very nice, rural neighborhood they were situated in, makes them seem deceivingly rich. However, the house was a major fixer upper that needed a lot of repairs and had a mouse problem when they purchased it. There were still parts of it not renovated ten years later, when the massacre happened. They had financial worries throughout the years especially after Tom acquired Rheumatoid Arthritis so they had to get creative to make ends meet. Both his parents worked and they were unsure of how they were going to pay for Dylan’s college tuition. Many of the students at Columbine High were from much more affluent homes and Dylan despised them as stuck up, status-y snobs. Dylan resented people flaunting their wealth by way of status symbols so much that he popped the BMW emblems off the front and back of his car and stuck them in his glove box. He’d likely hate it if you thought he was ‘rich’.

Mm, no, just the opposite; more like hating that this hadn’t happened to him sooner. 😉

Dylan’s dad worked from home running his home real estate business, Fountain Real Estate Mgmt. His mom began working four days a week in his Senior year. His brother moved out of the house to live in Aurora but he worked in Littleton so since he was in town, he visited his home regularly – sometimes on the weekends for family dinners on Sunday and such. When Dylan left school early as he did in his Senior year, he came home and often spent some time with his dad. They read the sports section together, they worked on Tom’s cars. Sometimes Dylan tagged along on Tom’s property management projects. But like most teens, his parents had to draw him out to get him engaged in spending time as a family. Not exactly something a seventeen year old, oldest child/only child living at home wants to do. Over time, Dylan’s preference was to become more reclusive and spend most of his time up in his bedroom tinkering on his computer, multi playing games over the internet and socializing on the phone and in chat rooms. So, no, Dylan wasn’t literally alone in his house but instead, figuratively. He was an island on to himself.

Yeah, he would’ve benefited greatly. 😉  

Dylan would be too petrified to make the first move and if he did, in just mentally contemplating it, he’d be risking rejection so..best not to try?  Her taking the lead would’ve been a major relief because the risk would’ve been already taken for him. She’d be the one making it clear that she was interested and so, yeah, major shocking surprise for him..but also a major *sigh* of relief. So, yes, Dylan would need the girl to lead the dance at the very start because he had no experience, he was shy but worst of all, had no hope that girls would see him that way. 

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I don’t think there was any formal acceptance, hazing or ritual or anything serious business like that. Haha. Though, maybe some of the dudes did that sort of thing with some secret sword knighting of new TMC bros, who knows.. It was probably a very casual type of thing where someone had mutuals that were ‘in’ or the original first members knew you from hanging out and associating with them, and so they’d basically say ‘yeah, sure, why not? I’m making you an honorary member of this badass band’. And that was that! They were ‘in’.

Marla makes it a point of specifying that Eric and Dylan were not considered part of the group though they were friendly with some group members.

Katie Thompson [1,221 in the 11K] once dated EH in February, 1999; mother put stop to it because EH was too old (he was a senior, she was a freshman).He took her and some of her friends out for lunch about two weeks before the attack. Asked her to Prom but her mom wouldn’t let her go. She said he was weird and not her type.

Ms. Bianca Thompson [1,223 in the 11K ] EH called frequently, trying to get date with her daughter (Katie); heard from friend that Katie was afraid of EH

Eric made numerous phone calls to Katie trying to get a date. Bianca (Katie’s mother) went on to say that Eric had met Katie at the Chilli’s restaurant one night but that was the last night she had direct contact with him. Bianca stated that Eric was calling all the time for a while, and she had interrupted a call once, Bianca thought it was strange that a senior in high school was attempting to date their daughter, a freshman, so they had told her she couldn’t go out with him, but she had not put up a fight about it. Bianca learned later from a friend of Katie’s (Erin Lucero) that Katie was afraid of Eric.

Mm, sometimes, yes, but not in every photo of his. I will say that Dylan does look vastly different in the RNN interview time period compared to how he looked/felt towards the end. Sometimes it’s like looking at a different person. What a metamorphosis from Jan ‘98 up until April ‘99 – and I don’t just mean in his dress aesthetic or his hair being longer and scraggly but in his physicality. He was rail thin and the trench helped conceal it by bulking his frame up a bit. Also, his long, thin almost gaunt face which was especially obvious in that one prom photo of him next to Robyn. He’s just a different person having lost the vibrance and vitality that he exuded 14 months before.

He did; he referenced the song in his writings.

I’m sure some probably don’t care to hear this but yes, I believe Dylan was initially a very, very caring person. And too much so. He was an overly caring, hyper sensitive person. A good guy with a soft, golden heart. He took things hard, took things personally and to heart. He cared too much what other people thought. He internalized those feelings and felt guilty about letting his true, uncensored feelings be known so as to not upset other people, friends and family. He felt bad about letting his bad feelings be known and potentially upsetting other people. He cared too much and it hurt him deeply so as time went on, he gradually shut it all down to protect himself. He numbed out his feelings, calloused himself over. All that bottled up negativity that he kept hidden from people – all that rage, resentment, hurt and pain was literally like he was a walking partially dormant volcano, seemingly, deceivingly calm (happy-go-lucky even) on the surface yet just underneath, at near eruption and bubbling over. His mom witnessed that apparently only at one point in her entire life with him (?!?) when they got into that confrontation on Mother’s Day, even then, Dylan was holding it all back to not lose it and spare her..but just barely. I think Dylan felt bad feelings were wrong and that he always had to be a good, a ‘nice’ and perfect person and so ironically, Dylan ended up giving in, giving himself over to all of the ‘bad’ that he’d denied himself over the years.

Marla wasn’t one of the “populars”, she was, however, accepted into the TCM in her Freshman year ‘97-98. This was when the original TCM was at it’s peak, she’d been accepted in by friends she knew in the group but Eric and Dylan were not. Keep in mind, the photo of Marla in the yearbook has her dressed conservative and proper like quite a few girls tend to do in their yearbook photo. Parents usually have some influence over what their kids wear so Marla is looking like the preppy, good girl and it doesn’t at all reflect how she dressed daily at school.

Marla was actually a Sophomore in the ‘98-‘99 year. Some Senior dudes do like the idea of dating Freshmen girls. It probably makes them feel more in charge taking the much younger, less experienced girl under their wing. Eric tried to date Kate Thompson who was a Freshman in the ‘98-’99 school year. However, since Eric was in hot pursuit paging and calling her numerous times, Katie’s mother discouraged the two dating because of his coming on too strong and also she was not comfortable with the age difference.

Columbine was a large school of nearly 2000 and apparently some schools do have mixed classes as Columbine did. Though, it’s pretty unlikely that Dylan intended the unsent love-suicide note for Marla especially in conjunction with what Sue claims to know which is that she was unaware of him. The primary reason being that Dylan and Marla knew each other and according to Marla’s 11K account, she had hung out with Zack and Dylan about a week or so before the massacre.  Whereas, in Dylan’s letter, he spends a certain amount of time working his way up to a big reveal of who he is and letting her know when they were in each others company once having worked on a project together so as to jog her memory. In the end though, he never did work up the nerve to drop the letter in her locker.. :- /    

But again, that’s not to say that Marla wasn’t one of the girls Dylan was considering for himself over the last two years of his writings. It simply means that the love letter he wrote in ‘99, was not intended for Marla at this late point in time but instead, was for meant for a girl that he perceived in his own mind that she’d recognize him based on the confession in his letter.

Imagine Sue slowly reading out loud:

 “A O Leet ..d O O d.. is that supposed to spell “Duuude”,  honey? That’s cute.”   
“where the kewl . Haack.er.   Wait a minute. You’re not actually hacking are you, Dyl?  Are you ?”  

*rolls his eyes exasperatedly*   “Never mind mom..”

*stomps off*

*Sue looks at Tom and mouths ‘what. does. that. mean?”*   😛

My feeling it is a combination of factors but the bullying, harassment, ostracism, devaluing and humiliation is definitely a fairly significant part, a foundational factor if you will.  It is a mistake to overlook bullying completely or worse yet gloss over and deny it flat out (as Cullen has done).  This peer abuse as part of the toxic culture in that school were underlying catalysts that began to negatively change the boys attitudes and set them down a self destructive path. Plus, the teenage hormones are kicking in big time with the testosterone and t’s like putting tinder on the beginning fire of suppressed rage and frustration with no outlet or no means to express or channel it positively and so then the depression and self hatred begins to take root.  At a certain point, the boys are so numb, disconnected and detached by the castes of “the haves” and “have nots” at their school that they begin to see certain peers that they once only resented no longer as people but targets, symbols to despise and destroy as a means to take back their power and retaliate. The boys are then acting out because they can’t empower themselves so they’re acting out and getting into trouble by stealing possessions from some adult’s van.

So, on top of the bullying, as I mentioned, there were other factors of causation. Another such aggravator would be the cops catching them in the act  of theft and besting them, hand cuffing them and keeping the two under the authorities thumb for an entire year. And because the two couldn’t properly deal with the bitterness they already felt towards the school, it’s favoritism and already feeling diminished, this was just another form of humiliation that made them feel out of control in the world. Suddenly, the two are banded together in their bottled up anger and begin to seriously talk about ultimate fucking revenge with one another to have the last laugh on the entire system. So, yes, bullying was most definitely the foundational cause of Columbine.  It’d be foolish to deny that the boys had no strong motivator at all whatsoever to do what they’d done.  If one feels disempowered and cornered enough, they do one of two things: implode on themselves or set the balance of scales right and attempt to empower themselves. In the case of mass shooters as with Eric and Dylan, they did both but the destroying of themselves at the end, was also a way of saying ‘you don’t have dominion over us; you don’t get to have the last word, we do.”