Once a week, or so, we’ll post an Editorial article that may or may not have to do specifically with sports, but will be something that is pertinent to the things our students deal with daily. This first article is one, that when I read it I knew it had to be shared with as many poeple as possible. After reading it, please share it with your friends, family, students, players and everyone else you can. We all need to recognize how our actions and words affect others and if we can prevent a tragedy by a simple kindness then we’ll all benefit. Thanks, Chip
Editor’s note: The following originally appeared in The Argonaut, the student newspaper of the University of Idaho on April 20, 2007, following the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech. It was submitted as part of a group of three to the Society of Professional Journalist’s Mark of Excellence Awards, for which NevadaPrep.com managing editor T.J. Tranchell was named a national finalist (top three).
I never met Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech senior responsible for this week’s shooting spree, but I know things about him that you might not know. Cho and I have some things in common that, on the surface, might not mean anything but could mean everything.
Every school — elementary, junior high, high school, colleges and university — has someone like Cho. Sometimes they go by the names of Carrie White, Charles Whitman, Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold.
Sometimes you know them. You may have had a class with the loner kid, the one who gave up his trench coat in 1999 because he was sick of being called a killer.
Sometimes, they figure out what is going on and grow up to be productive members of society, still a bit quirky, but aware enough not to go on a rampage, killing everyone in sight.
We never hear about those kids because they don’t make the news.
I never met Cho Seung-Hui, but I know more about him than almost anyone. If things had been a little different, you could have heard about me years ago.
If things had been just a tiny bit different, I could have been Cho Seung-Hui.
I was the loner kid, dressed in black, listening to death metal and writing violence-filled stories.
Some things don’t change. I wear sunglasses indoors and the majority of my wardrobe is still black. I still write violent fiction.
I spent seven years, from third grade to freshman year of high school, being teased, often for no apparent reason. I was an easy target: a slightly overweight redhead, with a quick-fire temper. In fifth grade, I even fought a girl.
For the record, she was bigger than I was and beat the crap out of me.
When these tragedies happen, common reactions run the range from sympathy for the victims and their families, to disgust and anger with the perpetrator. Does anyone ever try to sort out the reasons why someone like Cho might snap and become a media phenomenon?
Unless you lived in Cache Valley, Utah, in 1995 and actually read the paper, you’ve never heard this story. It didn’t make the major news and only warranted a sidebar in the local paper.
The afternoon of March 27, 1995, a 15-year-old North Cache Freshman Center student stabbed a classmate in the arm. The incident occurred on a bus, as the students had just returned from a trip to the local high school.
The victim was taken to the hospital for stitches and the perpetrator was taken to the county jail for booking before being held at the Cache Valley Juvenile Detention Center.
Further details were unavailable at press time.
The victim — we’ll call him Joe, although that’s not his name — took the redhead’s hat. Just another stupid freshman hopping on the bandwagon of making fun of the redhead. All those words freshmen use, the ones they heard from upperclassmen and have only been using for a year maybe, spewed from the mouths of Joe and his friends. The now hatless redhead tossed a few of those words back, but had a wider vocabulary than his taunters. (Even now, like Cho, he is an English major. Words are his weapons, something Cho may have forgotten.)
He didn’t want to fight anymore. He’d had enough of it after so long. It never solved anything; there was always someone else waiting for a turn. So the redhead put his hands inside his schoolbag, the same one he had packed clothes in for a trip the previous weekend to go fishing with his dad.
He didn’t know the small pocketknife was still in the bag.
I never met Cho Seung-Hui, but I know him. For a moment, I was him, ready to destroy the lives of every single person who had ever called me a mean name, everyone who I thought was my friend and abandoned me, and anyone who tried to stop me.
But I didn’t. I stabbed Joe once, in the arm as he protected his stomach. I turned myself in, did my time — not as harsh as one judge wanted it to be and more lenient than even I expected — and I haven’t been in a fight since.
Which isn’t to say there haven’t been opportunities. If you moved around as much as I did, being the new kid becomes the norm. Being the freak who hates the sun and listens to music about the devil is still fodder for those who feel the need to demean other people.
What saved me was a moment of violence beyond what I expected would happen. Without that moment, it would not have been long before I picked up a gun and began blowing people away.
I’m not saying what Cho did was right and I’m not negating the losses felt by the Virginia Tech community and the friends and families of those who died.
I’m not saying it is right but I am saying I understand how these things happen.
For all the loners and outsiders in this nation, the ones who feel that ending the lives of those you see as holding you down, holding you back, take a lesson from the past.
You can be immortalized as a crazy nut job who wasted not only your own life but the lives and futures of the people you killed.
Or you can stay out of the news and decide to not be that person. You can still wear black and listen to Slayer. You can still be yourself.
Besides, the best way to get back at all the people who teased you is to lead a long and successful life.
