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Melisa Rivera
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J. R. R. Flores
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2007-06-20
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<p>By now the subject of Virginia Tech has been much publicized and probably hackneyed. We talk about lax gun control laws, wasted lives, disturbed young men and how we wish things like these would never happen again. In my <a href="http://aslancross.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/in-the-mind-of-a-murderer/">previous entry[link]</a>, I talked about how problematic Cho Seung-Hui is and the difficulty with which we tend to see the minds of these people. We always talk about things like these happening to someone else. However, as Bill Watterson once said in his great comic strip series Calvin & Hobbes, "We are all someone else to someone else." And so instead of talking about Cho from a distance and saying how crazy he was, I'd like to talk about how I was probably just like him.
As I read through TIME's articles on the VTech massacre, I began reflecting on my own past and how disturbingly close I came to becoming a school shooter.
In real life, I'm a very quiet person—meaning I don't speak much. If I have something to say and feel it's absolutely necessary, I have a very loud voice. Most of the time, though, I prefer to keep to myself and do not really talk. This habit caused one of my co-teachers to remark "You know, if one of us is going to become a psychopath, it would be Joey." Of course, I'd just laugh and shrug off the remark. It was only today that I realized how close I was to this.
In one of my <a href="http://aslancross.wordpress.com/2007/04/08/resurrection-and-revival/">earlier posts</a> I talked about how I was so maligned by my classmates in grade school. I really hated them; there were times I'd think about seeing their corpses hanging from a large weeping willow tree on campus. Seriously.
I think this started after my parents' marriage was annulled, but I don't blame it entirely on them (and I presently harbor no bitterness toward them in this matter). There were a lot of events that led to certain, er, emotional imbalances I had in the past, I myself am not really sure how they add up to one another. Regardless, I was a young boy who was full of hate and I can very clearly remember that <i>at one point I really thought about shooting my classmates</i>. Dad had bought an air rifle at that time and I was beginning to learn how to use it, and I remember telling them to stop bugging me because I had a gun. Of course they mocked me even more, at which point I just kept quiet and seriously thought about blowing their brains out. How old was I then?
Ten.
The next year, I was beginning to move closer and closer toward rebellion, and my mind began to darken. I just have an eerie feeling that if the events of my life did not transpire as they have, I would have ended up walking onto campus with deadly weapons and making away with the lives of those who I saw as inferior, then myself. The difficulty in getting weapons aside, I certainly had the potential to be a school shooter.
I don't know how it happened, but God somehow dealt with the events of my life at that point and eventually brought me to Him. There were times I'd still feel that I was alone against the world (I still sometimes do) but I cannot deny that it was something much more dangerous before. I wanted to lash out against a world I thought was inferior to me, a world that I felt worthy to judge, a world that oppressed me.
Later on in college, I met the very guy who I had really felt like killing several years before. We were both waiting for a cab outside the university, and since we were both going in the same direction we just decided to take the cab together. We talked a bit about how the other was doing in college, where we planned on going when we graduated, and so on. I really don't think this would have been possible had my Lord Jesus not wiped away the bitterness that so stained my soul at a young age.
When I was a child, I felt like killing children. Now that I have grown in the grace of the Lord, I feel it is my calling to help them truly live. And this would all not be possible without my God working in my life. In His death I died to myself, and in His resurrection I rose again to a new life. Thus I have come to appreciate even more what He has done for me.</p>
<blockquote>"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." -Romans 12:2</blockquote>
<p>Teaching and not Shooting,
Your Black Lion
PS: I'm going on a short hiatus starting Tuesday night until Saturday. I'll be going to Pagudpud with Martin, Arghs and Fil. Yes, I'll finally be going to the beach.
~ by J. R. R. Flores on April 23, 2007.
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Original Source: <a href="http://aslancross.wordpress.com/2007/04/23/confessions-of-a-would-be-school-shooter/">http://aslancross.wordpress.com/2007/04/23/confessions-of-a-would-be-school-shooter/</a>
This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License</a>.</p>
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eng
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
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Confessions of a Would-Be School Shooter
blog
cho
confession
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Brent Jesiek
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null
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2007-06-02
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I was in his playwriting class last fall. I was always a quiet guy myself, not really making too many friends during my years at Virginia Tech. On a couple of occasions, we'd end up sitting close to each other. I had always thought that Cho was a little "off" but since I was strange in my own right, I didn't think too much of it. People like Cho and I never seem to make friends easily and the fact that we were both loners of sorts made me pay a little more attention to him that usual.
Just before Christmas I passed by Seung Cho while he was walking around the Drill Field, a little more sad-looking than usual. I offered him a cigarette which he refused with a wave of his hand. I then tried to talk to him about one of the plays we had recently reviewed in class and he finally started talking a little. We talked about the plot and the characters when suddenly Cho asked me what others had thought about his "Richard McBeef" story.
It was then that I told Seung Cho that some of the others in the class were a little concerned with his writing. Seung seemed to get a kick out of that because he suddenly had a smile where only a grin existed before. I told him that some people were talking about him before class, talking about he was a little strange acting and with this play of his, some other students joked about him being a charter member of the trenchcoat mafia. Cho wondered what that was, so I told him about the whole Littleton, Colorado school shooting. He seemed intrigued by my words. We talked a little more about "sticking it to the man" and how good it feels to break things sometimes. I used to steal cars and smash them into buildings, Seung mentioned he liked to hurt things. I didn't ask anymore questions.
After that day I thought differently about Seung-Hui Cho. I thought I might read about him in the paper one day, and not for any good reason.
And then it happened. All over the news. School shooting at Virginia Tech. My first thoughts when my mother called and asked me if I was okay was, " I wonder if it was Cho?!" After getting off the phone with my mom, I smiled a little knowing that Cho had gotten what he wanted. Revenge.
Cho Seung-Hui has gone and done what many of us "loners" only wish we had the courage do to. I too have often thought of taking my anger out on innocents, but unlike Seung Cho, I just don't have the courage to pull the trigger. He did.
I feel bad for the victims, but not too much. Perhaps people will start paying closer attention to us loners before we end up making ourselves popular, for all the wrong reasons!
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Original Source: <a href="http://thestoriesyoucannottell.blogspot.com/2007/04/seung-cho-and-what-i-know.html">http://thestoriesyoucannottell.blogspot.com/2007/04/seung-cho-and-what-i-know.html</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5</a>.
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eng
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
Title
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Seung Cho and what I know
cho
confession