Reading the feeds this afternoon I came across a link on Fark noting that we’ve reached the 10 year anniversary of Columbine, and it struck me that that was quite a month. And so, I present an inane little recollection of the things that have stuck with me to this day from that period-

18th Birthday
Starting things off was my 18th birthday in early April. Back when it was still a thriving thing, Collector’s Connection in Duluth was holding a Star Wars CCG tourney on the morning of my birthday, so I talked my parents into letting me go down and spend the night in a hotel with a couple of friends from SUMS* unsupervised. Seeing as we had a whole evening to kill before the tourney, we started things off by going to see this strange looking little movie called The Matrix, you may have heard of it.

While being a big sci-fi fan, and knowing/loving Blade Runner (the Director’s Cut), I’d mostly been exposed to space stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars to that point (and I wouldn’t be introduced to Ghost in the Shell until I was off in college), so it predictably blew my mind. To add to the reality-altering that the movie provided, the weather was (relatively) nice and sunny when we arrived, but upon leaving the theater we found ourselves in the midst of a chilly snowfall, a surreal cap to the movie that started the night off.

Movie done, it was back to the hotel room, where we stayed up all night playing cards and making increasingly terrible ideas for extended cuts and spinoffs/tie-ins to Titanic (thanks to some ad on the television), eventually finding ways to turn it into an entire 24-hour TV channel. What can I say, nerdiness+sleep deprivation+Leo hate leads to some odd things(he’s done some good stuff since, but it was so overexposed at the time). With the night killed and decks thoroughly tested, we were off to the mall to Play Cards, and play terribly we did. Having played so many games over the years I don’t remember what I was playing, its hard to keep track of these things unless something momentous has happened, and that was not the case this day, but it didn’t matter because this was the coolest thing I’d ever gotten to do for my birthday, and probably remains as such to this day.

Columbine
The month continues, graduation looms, and one afternoon I’m sitting in the Media classroom working on one such project or another on the super fancy video editor** that only myself and 2-3 others were allowed to mess around with when the TV cuts to a breaking news situation in Columbine, CO, and everyone just kind of stopped and looked on in horror/fascination. It comes to an end, and everyone just sort of ends the day in shock. By the next morning, the Trenchcoat Mafia was the new terror and I didn’t care, I’d been wearing my trench for more than a year and there was no way these fucks were going to cause me give it up, especially as this was Northern Minnesota and it was still fucking cold outside.

Off to school I went, consequences be damned… and things weren’t really any different than normal. Even though I’ve always been a huge nerd and outsider, I somehow managed to preserve some sort of neutrality among the various cliques, and so it was mostly light jokes from my classmates that greeted me when I arrived. Nor did I get any trouble from the faculty as I was one of the top students and I’d been the one helping them make the transition from Macs to PCs the previous winter, so they all loved me. It was a little disappointing, really, I kind of wanted to have that moment of being a dangerous rebel, but I was far too good in everyone’s eyes for them to so much as look at me strangely. Doubly so as some of my younger friends did get to face off with the faculty over it.

And Onward
And then, about two weeks later, it was graduation, the chaos of finishing those last assignments and final tests, getting graduation photos, sending out party invites, stealing as many moments as possible to slack off, finally getting to the graduation itself, and then grad party after grad party after grad party. Thinking about it, it seems like I went to more parties than I had good friends, anything for some free food, and somewhere along the way, having my own party with its awkward mix of friends, family, and church members.

(then that awkward, insanely hyped Star Wars thing happened and… well, yeah, you know)

I was an adult now. I had graduated high school. One more summer and then I was off to college to become a successful programmer of one stripe or another. And now, here we are, 10 years on. I’ve gone to college, dropped out of college, gone through a series of soul crushing call center jobs, and have finally found a place where I’m fairly content, dare I say happy, with what I get to do day in and day out. I’ve tossed off the shackles of my parents’ religion, been exposed to an unfathomable number of ideas, and come into contact with countless awesome nerds, geeks, and freaks, all influencing who I am today by gradually (if indirectly) helping me open up to being myself.

Sure, its nowhere near what I expected, but life specializes in the unexpected, and is all the better for it (even if I spend the bulk of my free time hermiting it up). Whatever happens, happens, so here’s to the next 10 years, may it be as weird and wonderful as these last 10 (I wouldn’t mind a bit of stability though!). But come what may, I’m back and plan to start contributing again in my own way, in my own place, after too long sitting on the sides consuming and offering small bits of contribution in other places.

*a Math/Science summer camp that was pretty much one of the best things to ever happen for me. 6 weeks of living in the dorms at St. Scholastica each summer before my sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school, where I stayed with a group of fellow nerds and geeks from all around Minnesota and Wisconsin doing many awesome nerdy things, both structured by the people running the show and in the evenings where we engaged in so many things that were verboten in my born-again evangelical Christian household that the awesome never stopped.

**The former Play Inc’s Trinity, an awesome little wonder that my school sprang a cool five grand for, letting the graphics of our public access channel/shows rival those of broadcasters in the area, and I got to be the main one playing with it, leading to a number of odd little extracurricular activities that were rather fun and unexpected. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a good spec sheet for us to all look back at and laugh a little.