When I told the math teacher Dylan had been accepted at the University of Arizona, he seemed impressed and slightly surprised. When we mentioned the other Arizona university, he laughed and said, “Oh yes. That’s where all the jocks go after they flunk out of UCLA.” We later shared this comment with Dylan, who changed his mind about visiting the school. The upshot of our meeting was that Dylan wouldn’t fail the course if he went to class and turned in the overdue assignments.
We sat down with Dylan’s English teacher next. She’d taught both of my sons, and I felt a comfortable familiarity with her. I was relieved to hear Dylan had turned in some missing assignments after she’d sent out the midterm report, and his grade had moved from a D to a B. His teacher also praised Dylan’s writing abilities. Tom and I were happily surprised. We’d always thought of Dylan as a math kid, and Byron as the son with the talent for language.
After this praise, the tone of the conversation shifted, and she told us Dylan had turned in a disturbing paper. (Tom remembers the word she used as shocking, because he wondered if it was a reference to sexual content.) We asked for details, but she only said the paper contained dark themes and some bad language. To illustrate the inappropriateness of Dylan’s composition, she told us about a paper Eric had written, from the first-person perspective of a bullet being shot from a gun. Eric’s story, she told us, could have been violent, but when it was read aloud the class was amused. Dylan’s story, on the other hand, was dark. It had no humor in it at all.
Her comments on the paper, which I did not see until a year later, read as follows: “I’m offended by your use of profanity. In class we had discussed the approach of using $!?* Also, I’d like to talk to you about your story before I give you a grade. You are an excellent writer/storyteller, but I have some problems with this one.”
During our conference, Tom asked, “Is this something we should be concerned about?” Dylan’s teacher said she thought it was under control. She’d asked Dylan to do a rewrite, and planned to show the original to Dylan’s guidance counselor. Since I never wanted to leave a meeting without an action plan, I asked, “So, one of you will call us if you think this is a problem?” She confirmed they would.
She did show the paper to Dylan’s counselor, who chided him about the language. I had the opportunity to meet with the counselor after the tragedy; he was understandably stricken by his failure to recognize an incipient threat. The professionals I have spoken with are divided on whether Dylan’s paper (and possibly Eric’s) would today qualify him for a screening in a public school system with a threat assessment protocol. It’s entirely possible that both would have gone unremarked: teenage boys often write disturbingly about guns and violence. True threat assessment, though, is all about assembling disparate clues to arrive at a full picture, and it’s likely that Dylan’s arrest, his suspension in junior year, and the disturbing paper would together have added up to a red flag.
We did not perceive the paper to be a red flag, though, and the events of the rest of the night contributed to diminish the relative importance of it. Since no one else was waiting to talk to the English teacher, we continued to visit with her. I mentioned a presentation I’d seen about the differences between Generations X and Y children. We chatted about the district’s language arts curriculum and one of the required reading books, A Prayer for Owen Meany.
We were all roughly the same age, and the three of us mused about what it had been like to be young during the Vietnam War. This prompted Dylan’s teacher to share a story. She’d brought a folk record from the sixties, “Four Strong Winds,” into class. The song featured the hardships faced by migrant farm workers, and it had always made her cry; but her students had laughed when she played it.
Tom and I leaned forward with concern. “Did Dylan laugh too?” She told us he had. I was bitterly disappointed; he often watched classic movies with us, and I would have expected better. Tom and I apologized for the insensitivity of our son and his classmates, and the three of us commiserated over the youth of today, like old-timers sitting on a park bench. We shook hands warmly when we parted.
It was Dylan’s reaction to the song—not the paper—that Tom and I talked about on the way home. I hated that he’d laughed when his teacher shared a piece of art that moved her. Tom could never part with old books, science journals, or car parts, and his piles of junk ordinarily drove me nuts. That night, though, I appreciated his idiosyncrasies as he dug out the old record. We sat in the living room with a cup of tea, and I gave myself over to the song’s melancholy refrain.
Tom saw an opportunity to teach Dylan a lesson, and to have a bit of fun, too. When he heard Dylan’s car coming up the driveway, he queued up the record. When Dylan came in, we told him about the meetings with his teachers. Tom remembers that we talked about the paper during that discussion and asked him to get it for us; I don’t remember asking for the paper until the following morning. As we talked, Tom hit Play. Eventually, Dylan recognized the song coming up in the background. Knowing he’d been set up, he started to laugh.
“Why are you playing that horrible song?!”
“Why is it horrible?” I asked him. He said he hated the “weird” sound of it. We told him what the song was about. “Just listen to it with an open mind,” Tom requested. Without protest, Dylan listened to the rest of the song. When it was over, he admitted it wasn’t that bad.
We told him how hurt his teacher had been, and talked about the importance of respecting the feelings of others. He admitted it had been wrong to laugh. Afterward, the three of us curled up on the couch to watch one of our favorite movies, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. As we headed off to bed, Tom and I felt we had provided the best guidance we could. I will never know if Dylan was pretending to care, or if he did.
The next morning, I asked Dylan to show me the English paper. He said it was in his car and that he didn’t have enough time to look for it. I said, “Well, I’d like to see it when you get home from school today. When will you be home?” He said, “I won’t have time today because I have to work.” I gave him a look that said, “Stop making excuses,” and added with finality, “I want to see the paper. You can show it to me tonight when you get home.” He said he would. But by the time evening came, Tom and I had both forgotten about it.
This lack of follow-through on my part was uncharacteristic, but indicative: I believed Dylan was a psychologically healthy human being. I never considered that the paper could be a reflection of deeply seated problems. I knew it contained some rough language and a dark theme, but had confidence that his teacher and the school counselor would handle the situation appropriately. If anything, I was interested in taking a look at Dylan’s writing skills.
I finally saw Dylan’s paper for the first time more than a year after his death; a copy of the story was among some of the items returned to us by the sheriff’s department. The subject matter—a man dressed in black who kills the popular kids at a school—was indeed disquieting, but I cannot help but wonder if, as an artist myself, I would have seen it as a danger sign if I had read it before his death. Artistic expression, even when it’s unpleasant, can be a healthy way of coping with feelings. I abhorred the violence so attractive to teenage boys—I could no more sit through an entire viewing of Pulp Fiction than lay an egg—but I never imagined Dylan would be capable of making that violence real.
? ? ?
That spring, whenever Dylan wasn’t busy, and the world slowed down around him, I noticed how pensive and distracted he looked. A month or so before the shootings, I approached him one afternoon as he sat on the couch staring blankly into the middle distance.
“You’re so quiet lately, honey. Are you sure you’re okay?”