Four months later: an essay for the school paper

Everyone is getting his name right. That's the long and short of it. There was a trick to being Sean's friend, and it was saying his name. S. E. E.N. Blame his mom for that, but probably nothing else. You could blame me. The fucktard on TV did when mom said I should on his show, screaming at me that I should have seen it coming or stopped my best friend. As if. Sean was my friend, yeah, but that's it. Tell someone that and I get told I'm dishonouring him, or myself, or whatever.

Like I give a shit. It's not like anyone else is going to want to be my friend at school now. His mom even tried to say it was all my fault, as if I was some kind of bad influence. But that's OK. Honest. I think my mom'd do the same if it was reversed. Honestly, I think most parents and friends would. Might be this whole essay for the paper is me not blaming myself. Fuck if I know. I'm not looking for sympathy or those pity-parade things.

Sean didn't have many friends, but he did have some besides me and none of that was a pity-thing at all. Some people are good at making friends, some not, some just don't try or try to hard. Shouldn't be hard to figure out which one you are, but it probably changes a lot anyway. Sean just wasn't good at all, all self-conscious and quick to jump on people over his name. He could hold his own in fights, thanks to that, but he shouldn't have had to. I guess the teachers were too busy with the bullying of kids who lisped or were foreign.

I almost deleted that sentence, or added a few more cliches to it. But fuck it: we're all part of the world. Actions lead to reactions, in chemistry and in life. Every Action is a reaction against the world. Like art: you see something, and you think you can do better. Reaction and ego. You see a school shooting, you think you can do better. Not art, but the same impulse. I'm not saying that's what Sean did. I am saying it could have been part of it. That everyone wanting to know about shit like that didn't help. That's what I'm saying.

And the jokes about his name, every damn year. We did talk about that, and I don't think it bothered him as much as he let on. You don't get used to it, but the anger is more reflexive than real? Maybe? Not that he'd have admitted it to anyone, but everyone is like that, too: we keep a large part of ourselves hidden, maybe even from ourselves. I'm not saying he's not at fault, but I am saying he's not exceptional. That Sean wasn't different from the rest of us, not really.

He wasn't crazy. He wasn't on drugs. It wasn't about some girlfriend. Or boyfriend, if the press have gone that way already. I think he wanted everyone to know his name, to say it properly, and to do that he could be a monster or he could be a hero.

So he chose to be a hero. Opened the door to the teacher's lounge, aimed. Fired. How many of us like school? How many find high school useful? Not many. And he knew that, and acted. To be a hero. Fucked up, yeah, but he probably got the idea from some action movie or thriller novel: not what he did, but the how and why, the headspace of it. Because that's the kind of heroes we have in our movies, the mavericks and all that shit.

And even if he's not a hero, and won't ever be one, and this essay won't ever get published, you're all getting his name right. Even those deliberately getting it wrong on that facebook hate-page know it. I think that might be enough for him. I think it really is that simple, and no one wants it to be.