The more I read, the more I think that the professionals got it wrong. Not that I know any better, it’s just that I think they’ve missed the diagnosis by being too quick to throw stereotypes into the list of symptoms. But what do I know?

I’ve spent many hours during the past week pouring over the newly released Columbine documents. Journal entries, class essays, online chat conversations, videos and drawings. Over 900 pages of data that not only help sketch a better profile of two confused kids, but also expose how misrepresentative the media was in their reporting over the past eight years. Both are unbelievably tragic, and I mean that in the deepest possible way. My heart aches for everyone involved. I’ve lost sleep thinking about it.

If you spend the time trying to get into the heads of these kids, it’s surprisingly easy to see their personalities emerge. Both wrote very openly, online and off, and neither was the least bit shy in putting themselves out there. A few videos (now posted on YouTube) further confirm what their writings show: one was an idealistic narcissist on a power trip, the other was a confused, depressed teenager with a hot anger streak. The shocking bit, however, is just how normal they both were.

Having gone to an all-boys school, I had a lot of time to observe practically every model of the adolescent male. With no females in the picture to skew behavior models, that environment is perfect for scrutinize teenage boys coming to grips with adulthood and their own hormones. And neither Eric Harris nor Dylan Klebold strike me as much different from anyone at my school.

Despite the reports, they were not complete outcasts. They weren’t listening to satanic music or professed Nazis. They were not the most picked-upon, with no friends or girlfriends. They had normal amounts. They were not part of the infamous Trenchcoat Mafia. Instead, they were mild friends with one former member, who happened to be a coworker at a pizza shop. They didn’t even kill in order to quench the thirst of revenge on jocks. Hell, they let one of the school’s biggest bullies live when they found him. They were kids that just weren’t popular. They were also kids that, like 80% of teenage guys out there, were too big for their britches and thought they were at the top of the food chain. And when they couldn’t exercise this ego and narcissism in the school, they retreated to their fantasy world of Doom and their journals. Normal, common behavior, if you ask me. Anyone observing my school from 1994-1998 would have seen countless similar examples.

Perhaps this is what scares me the most: So many people I know/knew were just the same. True, they didn’t plan to mass murder schoolmates simply to inflict chaos and disorder on the world, but beyond that…How many of my friends were so egotistical that they told off teachers to their face? How many listened to misanthropic music that left doubt and anger towards society (*cough* Bad Religion and Rage Against the Machine)? How many of us used to whine about hating school, hating certain classmates or hating life in general? Isn’t this normal teenage behavior?

Instead, following the Columbine massacre, the government assembled top psychiatric professionals in a summit to “solve” the issue of school violence. One of the results was that they neatly diagnosed Eric Harris as a clinical psychopath, and Dylan Klebold as depressive. Swept into nice, tidy piles, it effectively erases the creeping, collective fear that they were normal kids. The docs say at least one was a special, different case, a monster. I disagree.

Part of the definition of a psychopath is that they exhibit no compassion for anything. Yet Eric was unnervingly passionate about animals. Neither kid was fully resolved in their mildly maniacal writings…they both showed contradiction and ambivalence in their views (as a teen should). They claim that Eric’s narcissism is the biggest indicator of his psychopathic personality. Have they ever hung around with an intelligent pre-teen male who is fascinated with power? Most of these kids learn quickly that a pompous display of authority is a great defense mechanism. So can you call it narcissism if it’s a put-on or forced behavior?

So as this issue continues to haunt me, as it has since that very day, I cannot help but think that once again the adults have failed the children. Instead of trying to face the issue with honesty and resolve, they simply sought the most digestible answer that would help the public move forward. How many kids that I sat next to for four years were one gun shy of doing the exact same thing? You don’t want to know.