The day before the school shooting at Columbine, 3 students came to my class to tell us how to act if there was a school shooting

In 1999, I was in 5th grade at an elementary school in Colorado. I lived in Aurora, which is right next to Littleton. We were in class when three high school students came in to see us after lunch. We were told they were from Columbine High School. It was a bit weird to have high school students in our classroom, but we were used to seeing high school students because they would sometimes come to our school to read to us or help us with our classwork.<br><br>One of the students was a boy with a nice smile and blonde hair that was a bit messy and unkempt. He looked tired, but he smiled at us and shook hands with some of the kids in my class. He was friendly, as if he was excited to be there. The other two were a girl and a boy who looked like they were a couple. They both had very long, dark hair and dark clothes with chains and black boots. It reminded me of a goth girl at my school. They didn't smile at all and just looked at the ground. They looked sad and like they were grieving for something. The girl looked angry almost - she just kept her head down and her eyes darted to the teacher sometimes. I felt a bit scared of the girl.<br><br>The three students went up to the front of the class. The boy with blonde hair stepped forward and smiled at everyone. He told us that they were from Columbine High School and they were here to help us with an important issue. He said that we should know how to act if someone came into our school with a gun and started shooting people randomly. He said it was important that we should know what to do. <br><br>Then the goth-looking girl stepped forward. She looked up at us for a moment and smiled a little. She seemed like a nice person. She explained that if someone came into our classroom, we should not try to run, because that would make us look like we were in danger. She said we should get on the ground, put our hands behind our backs, and act like we were dead. She said that if we were on the ground and didn't move, we would look like we weren't important.<br><br>The goth boy stepped forward. His eyes were red like he had been crying. He told us that we shouldn't look at the shooter, and we shouldn't look at the bodies if people were dead. He told us to just close our eyes and wish that it would all be over. I remember him saying "Just close your eyes, and wish it would all be over."<br><br>The blonde boy stepped forward again and smiled. He said "try to act like a dead body as much as you can."<br><br>The three students were crying. I could tell they were upset and I felt bad for them, but they were still smiling at us. They thanked us and left.<br><br>I asked my teacher why they came to our class to tell us this. She said they had been through a tough time and she was just letting them talk to us as a way to help them heal. I asked her what they went through, but she just said she couldn't tell me and asked me to be quiet.<br><br>The next day, April 20th, 1999, two students at Columbine High School went on a shooting spree and killed 13 people, as well as themselves. It was all over the news. I never forgot what the three students told us the day before. I always wondered if they were friends of the shooters, if they knew the shooters, or if they somehow knew this was going to happen.<br><br>I'm not saying that the three students were predicting what would happen the next day. I'm just saying that it was very strange that they would come to a random class to talk to us about a school shooting, and then something like that happened the next day.<br><br>I never saw those three students again, but I never forgot what they said to us, and I'll always remember them as being sad and grieving before it happened.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>\*EDIT\*: The three students told us that we should get on the floor and act like a dead body. Not we should get on the floor and act like a "dead body as much as we could."