Trivial encounters with E/D

Thousands of people crossed paths with E/D during 1981-1999 - met them, talked with them. Most of those encounters were trivial: short-lived and happened just once.

Lately, I've been wondering for example how the photographer who took their senior year photos felt after 4/20. Of course, I know the photographer must have taken photos of hundreds of high schoolers that year alone, but still. Those yearbook photos were everywhere after 4/20, even on the cover of Time!

I wonder if the photographer has wondered about it. Does he remember the photo session? Those senior photos were actually surprisingly great, almost looked liked actors' promotional photos - different sets, different clothing, so it must have taken at least 15 minutes (of fame) to take those.

(I also wonder if E/D thought during the photo session that these are the photos that will spread through the media...)

Other people I wonder about is customers of Blackjack Pizza. E/D made pizzas for hundreds of people. Do some of them remember E/D? Do some of them even laugh about it? "Eric Harris made a pepperoni pizza - and you know what, it actually wasn't that bad!"

Well, most likely most of these people - like the photographer or the pizza customers - don't remember E/D at all. They weren't that charismatic or different, really. I remember Mark Manes' girlfriend saying that E/D were "okay" and "nice", but not interesting enough to actually start a real conversation with.

Sometimes I wonder if I myself have ran across someone who would later on become (in)famous - and I just don't remember that encounter.

These are the trivial encounters that would have significance later on - like for example when Eric and Dylan met. No one remembers it, but if it wouldn't have happened, the U.S. would be different today.

Some people have a memory for faces and names. I think those types would have remembered them more. I spoke with one of the Columbine journalists via email, and he said he has a hard time remembering details from that day. He says the terrible memories just all blend together...

I can imagine that we all end up crossing paths with someone who will eventually become famous for either good or bad reasons. I had a close friend in middle school, whom I drifted away from in high school. We still were acquaintances however, and spoke to each other often. He ended up killing a friend of his after getting drunk in a remote area. He shot his victim twice in the lower legs and torso, and once in the head. He was using a shotgun, so I can imagine it was pretty horrific.

I don't know about their main yearbook picture but I feel like they definitly were thinking about NBK in this photo, I remember hearing somewhere that Eric had suggested this pose
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I've often thought about this myself.

I sure as hell wasn't happy when I learned about Smiggles. It freaked me out.

Yeah smiggles... I never talked to him or exchange PMs, but he did leave a comment under our motion piture on youtube (his comments removed by youtube this year) and we offered him a pretty regular reply to his comment from the film group profile.

I think he wrote something to the extent of: "lol at the 90s CRT computer screens" and I using our film group profile I replied : "That's the real thing filmed at Warsaw U. Honestly, they still use those..."

He also left a comment how he wished there were some sort of better special effects and someone replied to him taht we simply didn't have any sort of budget to afford special effects at all.


Just the sort of trivial interaction milions of people have online everyday.


I think people having interactions with Eric or Dylan would brush these off even easier than we did with Lanza. After all, they just went in to buy a pizza, not made a movie about a shooting ;)

How often did he post on the old message board?

I think of this too, they had only 17/18 years of unknown innocence, and now aeons of being known monsters.

I watch the video of Eric in the cafeteria walking past people, they just walk past like he's nothing.. and then we see Dylan in the class full of people at the end, they do the same thing just walk past like he's just a regular classmate, it's a really strange feeling seeing that, knowing what they will become and how infamous the image of them is and seeing them around people who have no clue at that point that this will happen.

CharlesWhitman wrote:

I think of this too, they had only 17/18 years of unknown innocence, and now aeons of being known monsters.

I watch the video of Eric in the cafeteria walking past people, they just walk past like he's nothing.. and then we see Dylan in the class full of people at the end, they do the same thing just walk past like he's just a regular classmate, it's a really strange feeling seeing that, knowing what they will become and how infamous the image of them is and seeing them around people who have no clue at that point that this will happen.

Well that's the thing, back then for everyone else they WERE regular classmates. People treated them like pretty much every other random CHS dudes. Some guy in the cafeteria video is telling Eric what sort of job his dad offered him, the blonde lass is joking with Eric etc. Regular teen interactions.

We don't happen to have a video of similar kind with Dylan, but I'm sure it would have been the same deal.

radaddio wrote:

How often did he post on the old message board?

Who Lanza? Not too often. He had moments where he came, made 6 posts in one hours and then not have any forum activity for weeks. Back on the Danny Ledonne forums, he was relaly one of the very minor contributors and most of his posts were in the off-topic section, stuff like what sort of 80s films he liked and whatnot.

Supposedly he was more active later on, when the Ledonne forums changed the owners and turned to using the "ShockedBeyondBelief". Duyring that period, I was very busy with my RL at the time and was not active at the forums at all, so you need to ask other people for the specifics.

I wonder about Bob Kirgis daughter. I remember reading E/D was really nice to her and that her father took her to see fireworks with them. I wonder how old she is now and if she remembers E/D. She was a little kid back then.

CharlesWhitman wrote:

I think of this too, they had only 17/18 years of unknown innocence, and now aeons of being known monsters.

I watch the video of Eric in the cafeteria walking past people, they just walk past like he's nothing.. and then we see Dylan in the class full of people at the end, they do the same thing just walk past like he's just a regular classmate, it's a really strange feeling seeing that, knowing what they will become and how infamous the image of them is and seeing them around people who have no clue at that point that this will happen.

Not terribly often but I think you can find his posts if you google smiggles shocked beyond belief.

I think it must have been weird for the people Eric was close friends with as a smaller kid.

I probably would have remembered Dylan because he was, IMO, INCREDIBLY attractive. I still remember a guy who worked at a local ice cream place a few years ago who I thought was gorgeous. I remember attractive people's faces for a LONG time. I probably would have tried to order pizza from him and my tongue would have become a sponge in my mouth and I would say something asinine like "Your eyes are pretty? I want a date? On my pizza? I mean uh, I have to go. Here's my number."

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], I remember seeing a video on YouTube of news reporters interviewing a girl from Plattsburgh who knew Eric in middle school and had his signature in her yearbook and it was heartbreaking. She said "I got my yearbook out and compared names and pictures and sure enough...*chokes back a sob* it was him." This was a day or two after the shooting.

I've lived near Columbine since early this year.. you don't hear much NBK discussion as it's been 16 years so no surprise.

I was @ a local restaurant & overheard a younger guy talking about hanging out with Dylan and partying with the group they both knew, but he looked to be early to mid twenties and very likely fabricated his story for attention.

WendlaBergman wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], I remember seeing a video on YouTube of news reporters interviewing a girl from Plattsburgh who knew Eric in middle school and had his signature in her yearbook and it was heartbreaking.

Here is the video.

And yeah, I'm sure that for Eric's old friends from Plattsburgh, Michigan, etc. it must have been so weird, because for them Eric was this smiling little boy full of life. Eric's transformation to dark and angry didn't start before CHS. His old friends never knew this Eric Harris.

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I wonder how Eric's life would have been different if he had stayed in Plattsburgh...

Dylan's disillusion would have been the same - even if Eric never moved to Colorado. What would have happened to Dylan? I'm not sure. Anything is possible - suicide, school shooting or just going to Arizona and figuring life out.

I feel like Dylan would have eventually gone to college and life would have gotten better for him. I think he was scared to actually kill himself without NBK or something else essentially forcing him to.

I don't know what Eric would be like if he stayed there.. but I'm going to create fantasy scenario  Perhaps he would have been more into sports (especially baseball) and attended baseball games, he would have had a close group of friends who all grew up with each other and he'd feel almost like a member of a family with them, and they would travel and see places together and it would have taken his mind away from the negative things of the world.

Eric would have never become rebellious and never adapted the dark/combat style of clothes and not used his brains for bad/crafty things and instead use it more for benefiting the community, he'd help out with firework stands for free just to be nice, not to get his hands on gun powder and he'd do stuff such as help his friends and people in the community with fixing their computers and giving people lifts in his car, and his hobbies wouldn't be guns it would be something like taking photographs of classic steam trains or collecting baseball cards and probably organize events where young people can go and play video games together, he'd later go to college and seek a profession in video game design...

as for Dylan, he'd have gone to Columbine and stayed closer to Brooks and Zach and been very helpful to the school as an computer techie and equipment engineer, he'd have designed CHS's internet home page and maintained the servers. He'd have probably still gone through his depressive teen phase, but he'd be taken right out of it and see that he has people all around him that are there for him and he's not alone and it's just a phase many teenagers go through, he'd probably end up being with Robyn and then having a successful time at Arizona University. Later he and Brooks would share a collaboration YouTube page where they post short movies they had wrote and filmed and gaming videos.

I think people underestimate the issues Dylan had with himself and overestimate the ones he had with his HS.

Eric, well its my opinion as we can;t diagnose him, but reading his journal I get the impression he was more than just a random guy who suddenly got "rebellious and adapted the dark/combat style of clothes and used his brains for bad/crafty things".

Of course, it migth be just my impression and I can be projecting stuff onto him for all we know.