Judge not, lest...

As a public service, I thought I'd pass along this link that Slate magazine mentioned today. It is the essay the Susan Klebold wrote about her son Dylan, who was one of the Columbine shooters. She wrote it for Oprah's magazine, after declining many interviews. It is eloquent and haunting. We hope that the parents of deranged and violent people will indicate that they in some way are to blame. Certainly they are sometimes the reason. But as seems true here, this is not always and perhaps not even often the case:  

"His adolescence was less joyful than his childhood. As he grew, he became extremely shy and uncomfortable when he was the center of attention, and would hide or act silly if we tried to take his picture. By junior high, it was evident that he no longer liked school; worse, his passion for learning was gone. In high school, he held a job and participated as a sound technician in school productions, but his grades were only fair. He hung out with friends, slept late when he could, spent time in his room, talked on the phone, and played video games on a computer he built. In his junior year, he stunned us by hacking into the school's computer system with a friend (a violation for which he was expelled), but the low point of that year was his arrest. After the arrest, we kept him away from Eric for several weeks, and as time passed he seemed to distance himself from Eric of his own accord. I took this as a good sign."

Apart from the violent outcome, this could well be a lot of teenagers that I know.

For the Slate piece, and the link through, click here.