I didn’t plan on writing a detailed anniversary article for today. Topics or issues that evoke a lot of sensitive emotions are difficult for me to write about sometimes. I just thought I’d briefly acknowledge and mention condolences, but…it doesn’t seem “right” to do that, so I’m just going to speak from my heart and memory.
I just turned 16 when the September 11th terrorist attacks happened. I was in Mrs. Craig’s choir class. We were of course having song practice, when all of the sudden, an administrator came to the room. With the administrator privately speaking with Mrs. Craig for several minutes, we students began to shoot the breeze. Eventually, she came back in the room with this stunned and frozen look. “They want us to turn on the TV,” she said. There the twin towers were, burning…smoking. We all thought a plane had accidentally crashed. Being the self-absorbent teens we were, we just said “Whoa, that’s crazy,” and kept socializing. As the school day went by, it slowly but surely occurred to us that something more was awry, as many teachers halted class and some students were in frantic fear that their traveling or New Yorker loved ones were in danger or harmed. Some teachers tried to keep students calm by maintaining normalcy and continuing with class. Others kept the TV on and gave students the option to sit in hallway if the images were too difficult to watch. What’s odd is that I can recall other’s reactions fairly well, but not my own. I can’t remember if I stayed in class, or went in the hallway…I don’t know. One of my more distinct memories is how we were all in the history room at some point, and when a group of kids busted out in laughter from their own casual conversation, a student yelled “What are you doing?!! Do you not understand what’s going on? This is us!! Us!!,” as she pointed to the screen and the tumbling towers. It was in that moment I looked up at the television and realized I missed something.
I just turned 16 when the September 11th terrorist attacks happened. I was in Mrs. Craig’s choir class. We were of course having song practice, when all of the sudden, an administrator came to the room. With the administrator privately speaking with Mrs. Craig for several minutes, we students began to shoot the breeze. Eventually, she came back in the room with this stunned and frozen look. “They want us to turn on the TV,” she said. There the twin towers were, burning…smoking. We all thought a plane had accidentally crashed. Being the self-absorbent teens we were, we just said “Whoa, that’s crazy,” and kept socializing. As the school day went by, it slowly but surely occurred to us that something more was awry, as many teachers halted class and some students were in frantic fear that their traveling or New Yorker loved ones were in danger or harmed. Some teachers tried to keep students calm by maintaining normalcy and continuing with class. Others kept the TV on and gave students the option to sit in hallway if the images were too difficult to watch. What’s odd is that I can recall other’s reactions fairly well, but not my own. I can’t remember if I stayed in class, or went in the hallway…I don’t know. One of my more distinct memories is how we were all in the history room at some point, and when a group of kids busted out in laughter from their own casual conversation, a student yelled “What are you doing?!! Do you not understand what’s going on? This is us!! Us!!,” as she pointed to the screen and the tumbling towers. It was in that moment I looked up at the television and realized I missed something.
It has always taken me a while to absorb system-shocking events. I never have an initial grief reaction. I just go into this numb state. Then in the days and weeks to come, I start to feel what’s happened in an excruciating way. I went to bed on the night of 9/11, watching the news and thinking “they’re still reporting on this. This isn’t going to go away. This nightmare that looks like a scene out of an alien-takeover movie is….real….” Once the horror and the magnitude of the attacks set in…it was just another reason for me to question the nature of man, and why evil, sin and human suffering exists. I further wondered about this subject as fear-based prejudice and racism against Middle Eastern-Americans stewed, and multitudes of men and women my age died in the subsequent wars declared by President Bush. These and other events (such as the precautionary Spring 2003 cancellation of my senior class trip to Disney World and the death of Osama Bin Laden in 2011) kept me from staying numb with September 11th. It seemed as if I was never going to be able to let it go or get away from it. I never wanted to let it in. I never wanted to try to comprehend it. It was just too much. Even now, being bombarded with anniversary media…it’s hard to take for hours on end. It’s a memory I don’t want to relive, and yet at the same time, I have a need to force myself into commemoration. Why? So I can say to the surviving loved ones of those that perished: “You are STILL and always will be in my prayers. You haven’t been forgotten.”
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