Teen Truth
I went online to read the Bones Wikipedia entry, and discovered one of the episodes had been canceled in light of the Virginia Tech massacre this year.
So I clicked on the link to the Virginia Tech entry, and it's not the first time I've read it. It sends chills every time I do, though. It's only been, what, six, seven months since it happened?
I remember last year, when about a month after the massacre, we were treated to a special presentation. We thought it was just another bit of fun, or a dull assembly.
Boy, how wrong we were.
5.23 . Ross Academy - Cerritos, CA
5.24 . Johnson Middle School - Westminster, CA
5.25 . Stacy-Clegg Middle School - Westminster, CA
5.26 . Weekend
See that? That's us right there, copied straight from their schedule, Teen Truth's schedule, for 2007.
It featured a lot of raw footage from various schools, things that we see everyday that goes on right under the noses of the school faculty. Normal to us, until we got to the Columbine footage.
It was frankly rather terrifying. It didn't look much different from any other school - it looked like something that could have practically happened on our campus.
Screaming, shots, gunfire, and the 911 call from the library... utterly chilling, and only made more shocking in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre.
It really did sober a lot of us up - except for the few who still laughed it off somehow.
After the ending, when the statistics for other school shootings worldwide popped up, all of this was only accurate up to a shooting from 2006. And unfortunately, Virginia Tech seems to be the newest of the stats.
When he asked everyone who had ever bullied anyone to sit down after he had us all stand up, only one person was left standing - Lauren. One person out of over a hundred kids, and suddenly it was no wonder stuff like this happened.
Throughout the security footage, we (me and my friends) ended up inching nearer to each other a couple times. Kind of corny, but honestly speaking, it was better to know that we were all there.
We were a little paranoid after that, especially since one of the kids in our class, someone that we had tried to talk to but had alienated herself, for the most part, had been writing rather disturbing things in her notebook. Nothing came of it, really. She isn't here this school year, as far as I know.
But stuff like this really brings reality that much closer to home.