Defence Against The Dark Arts

We are approaching an ugly milestone: On Monday it will have been ten years since the massacre at Columbine High School. It will be ten years since I played Doom on my computer. And my son will be nearly old enough to comprehend some of this.
The topic of bullies and how to deal with them has come up a number of times at our dinner table. My son has had a few run-ins with bigger kids, which means just about anyone else his age or older. He's become pretty well adjusted to being called "midget," and has become confident enough in his mental strength to rise above most of the day to day tumult that is middle school. Still, learning to deal with kids who didn't attend Peter Pan Nursery School and learned to "use their words" can be a challenge. That was the lesson my son was learning about the time that Dylan and Eric were shooting up their high school.
Now I live in a city where two kids, eight and ten, were arrested for trying to rob a convenience store with a BB gun. They wanted Push-Pops and the cash in the register. The night clerk was able to keep them occupied long enough for the police to arrive. I teach at a school where a fifth grade girl brought a hunting knife to school because "some girl was following her home." When her father came to pick her up, he said he had wondered where that knife had gotten to, after it had been missing for a week. My son is almost twelve. We wondered if now would be the time to talk with our son about what happened in Colorado in 1999.
Sometimes, as parents, we wonder if our son is playing too many video games. We fret over the kind of TV and movies he watches. We screen the songs that he puts on his iPod. We talk with him each evening about what happened at school that day. We know that he is growing up.