I’ve been watching a lot of different documentaries lately, and they really make you think. A lot of them have been about crime, but a good bit has been about social issues and the government. They have been very interesting to say the very least. My generation Millenials and in an extension Gen Z have been through a lot throughout our lifetime.

The main documentary I watched was called Generation Columbine, and it was really heartbreaking, but it really makes you think, especially about everything our generations have gone through. I was in middle school when Columbine happened, and it’s was so odd how everything changed so fast. I remember almost immediately we weren’t allowed to have solid bookbags at school anymore, they had to be clear plastic or mesh. Both sucked because the clear plastic was fucking cheap and I remember in my 7th-grade year my twin and I had to replace those bookbags like three or four times. Then the mess was long-lasting, I know because it was the bookbag I used for the 8th grade and then the rest of high school, then I gave it to my little sister and she still uses it. The only problem with it is I lost a lot of paper and pencils and other random items like erasers because it’s mesh. The only other thing is the female weren’t allowed to bring what the school considered large purses anymore.

Those weren’t big deals but middle school and high school was a while ago for me, and that is something I remember that was a direct effect on the school’s side from the Columbine school shooting. Another thing I do remember was my dad had to sit my twin and I down and tell us that they had to remove someone from the high school, (when we were in middle school) because they made a hit list which the student was inspired by Columbine and our cousin’s name was on the top of the list. It was very shocking back them, but know tbh I can see why my cousin was/is kind of a dick, but that would not be the only hit list that the school found while I was in school, there was another but I don’t think I knew anyone on that one.

Even if you weren’t alive during Columbine, you have felt the effects of that event. Especially now, we are teaching children how to hide better during an active shooter drill. The events that happen in our lifetime are felt in the next, good or bad. Columbine has not only hurt the nation but also unfortunately inspired other school and mass schoolings. Just in 2018 there was the Santa Fe School Shooting and the Kerch Polytechnic College Massacre were referred to as Columbine copycats, and it had been about two decades between then and 2018.

It is so strange to think about how so much has already happened and is still happening. In 1986, before I was born the Space Shuttle Challenger Exploded, and while it didn’t happen while I was alive I remember learning about it almost every year I went to school even when I was young. I remember thinking how upsetting it was, and now I think they probably shouldn’t have shown that to elementary kids, because that was pretty disturbing. Then in 1995 was the Oklahoma City bombing, and the OJ Simpson Trial. I remember both, with the Oklahoma City bombing I was the hospital and watched a lot of news for some reason, which was odd for someone in the third grade but I don’t think watched by choice, I think it just happened to on. Which OJ’s trial, was really the first trial that I remember that became very mainstream, and everyone was talking about it, and everyone had an opinion.

I obviously already mentioned the events in 1999, but since then including the major school shootings to the present, there have been 293 school shootings in the US. I don’t understand how the government hasn’t taken steps to make gun control happen.

Then turn of the millennium happened, and Y2k. I don’t actually know anyone who thought that y2k was going to happen, but I do remember thinking it would have been funny if it did. Then in 2001 is when 9/11 happened with paved the way for the Iraq war, and Bin Laden’s death. And agree or disagree with the war, we are still feeling the effects of it, and we still have troops in the middle east.

Then in 2005 was Hurricane Katrina, I was going into my senior year, and to be honest, I don’t remember much about this storm, but Florida gets hit by hurricanes all the time and that year we had a flood. Where teens are more aware of the national and global news these days with the internet, it wasn’t like that for me back then, I definitely did use the internet for news back then. I mostly learned about Hurricane Katrina a lot later, so it makes me think everything there is a major storm there is always someone who said if they (people who stay at home) during a storm didn’t want to be harmed then they should have left, and I always think of the people who couldn’t leave during Katrina, because the truth is not everyone can leave, not everyone has the means to leave, and not everyone has somewhere we can go. The truth is the has few major storms, I stayed home. I don’t have anywhere I can go, and if go to the public shelter I can’t bring the bunny. Then all of this is multiplied at the moment because of COVID.

2006 happened with the school shooting at Virginia Tech, which happened seven years after Columbine, and at the time it was also the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history. Then 2007 happened which was the Great Recession, and while they say that the US recovered by 2010, a lot of people say otherwise and have never recovered. Then a light in the United States history when we elected our first black president Barack Obama. Which lead to 2015 when Gay Marriage became legal in all 50 states, I actually had a friend and her wife who was there at the white get marriage and was on Time magazine. I also had my small town do more stupid crap because we were made fun of on a late-night talk show (it was deserved) (I don’t remember which one) because our county clerk cried about having to perform the gay marriages so much that she got it where she didn’t have to her job anymore, and god I’m so not voting for that pos.

Then in 2012, we had the Sandy Hook happen, and the events had parents of the victims and other community members create the Sandy Hook Promise. This was way different from Columbine because they believed that you were safe a school and a shooting couldn’t happen, and while I think no one thought this would happen at an elementary school, school shooting had been happening for over a decade so I would have thought at this point progress would have been made. 2016 was the Orlando Night Club shooting, and that was also the same weekend that Christina Grimmie was murder and the same city. It is the deadliest event in the history of violence against LGBT people in the US and the deadliest terrorist attack on 9/11. Also at the time, it was called the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in the United States history.

Now, we have to talk about the Parkland school shooting. This was a miss on so many levels, by the shooter who should have never been able to buy a gun was able to buy it so easily able to buy one to the school resource officer who hid and did nothing as people were dying and he was charged with nothing because they are not legally required to protect you. What came of this was some awesome activit, and march for our lives.

Lastly, because it’s currently happening is COVID and the BLM protests. I think it’s so odd when I was a kid in school learning about history I never really though I would be experiencing anything that would be making history, even though it was happening during and all around me I really didn’t see it.

So, how do you feel about the defining points in your life so far?