Tuesday, December 01, 2009

SCHOOL SPIRIT REVISITED

Originally published one year ago today. Italizied words added.

On this date 11 years ago people died in the high school I was attending. People were also paralyzed and a few survived their wounds. I think about that at least once a year, usually more. Yes, I knew everyone involved including the shooter who was in my first two classes.

In high school there are always the corny cheers about being "proud to be a Pirate, yes I am...".
Well at football games I usually wasn't. We stunk. But 11 years ago tomorrow I was proud to be a Pirate. Some students from the prayer circle which was the target of the shooting made a huge sign and put it on the front of the school which was surrounded by TV vans from CNN, NBC, CBS, etc. The sign read, "Michael, we forgive you." I don't think about that part of the story as much. I wish I did. That is awesome maturity from high school students, unfortunately I was too immature to be a part of that at that point in my life.

Heath High School has since put in a memorial garden, which is nice. But I wonder what happened to that sign.

Another memorable moment from that season of my life was the entire school meeting in the lobby for the prayer circle the next day. Hearing the entire school body sing "Amazing Grace" truly was amazing. For a while every time I heard that song being sung by youths I got chills.

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