I seem to have hijacked this thread, and I want to set that right.
None of these posts are intended to be about me primarily. They're intended to be about bullying, about the long term effects on a human child of being immersed in an unremitting world of abuse and ostracism and mockery and cruel treatment, a world where adults are perfectly aware of what is going on and either don't care enough to intervene, or actually approve of it. [Please don't buy the excuse that maybe nobody knew what to do. People who give a damn don't let that stop them. They find out what to do, and they do it.]
They're intended to connect dots that our society and culture seemingly doesn't want people to connect - lest, God forbid, we learn something, grow, and change?
The proper response to an incident like VT or Columbine or any other such is not so much 'how could this happen?' or 'how do such monsters come to exist among us?'. The answers to those questions are right under our noses. It is because we ignore those answers that we have to keep asking the questions over and over.
The proper response is: there, but for the grace of God, go I.
And then to add human compassion and reason and action to the grace of God, for those others who have not received such grace... so they don't have to go the same way.
Read the article about Peretti, and think about that kid in Blacksburg. Really think about him. As a child. As a human being. Because he was. Before he was a walking horror, before he was a pit of rage and death, he was a child. He was a human being.
I'm dropping off this thread now; I've said pretty much all I can say.