Nothing says it better than a firm bump against Reality; it's a great cure for head-noise and the kind of psychotic lack of orientation that many kids suffer from. It is easy to forget how MUCH orientation someone needs to be able to relate to most things in our highly derivative, abstract and insulated culture.

But, as regards the Columbine kids, the parents have taken an awful beating on both sides of the killing zone. The two shooters had some really bizarre stuff going on inside them, of that we can be sure. But it is a little too easy to attribute that to the things Paul Harvey rants about. Even calling it "bizarre", an easy thing to do, makes it a little harder to see, doesn't it. Has anyone ever gathered any real data about the boys and what their real lives (in contrast to their media profiles or their school counselor profiles) were like? Each of them had some kind of screaming emergency or major conflict or some thing of that nature locked up behind the acceptable social interface they showed the world up untiltheir last morning. Guns firing bullets were a solution, but I have not heard that anyone has really tracked down the problem.