This morning, I was startled awake by a simple yet eerie dream. The last thing I remember before being rattled conscious is the sound of a loud plane and a thunderous crash. With my heart racing and my body tense, I woke up and immediately remembered what today was. It was 5:11 A.M. A time a mere decade ago that was a simpler time. A time with around 3,500 more people still living in it. At least it would be for a few more hours.
I was born at the end of the 80’s. That’s not really saying much since I have very few memories before 1993. A world before VCRs, HIV/AIDS, and remembering what it was like before cell phones and the Internet simply does not exist to me. A simpler time and place becomes harder to remember with each passing day.
Of course, for so many, it is hard to forget where they were on this day an entire decade ago. I was eleven years old sitting in Mr. Conway’s 7th grade social studies class. I had woken up that day excited because it was going to be my very first babysitting job that afternoon. Ten years, plenty more “firsts” under my belt, a high school diploma and a Bachelor’s degree later, I can still remember that morning. I sat in the back corner of the room by the door. I had an excellent view of the entire room, the chance to day dream out the window without anyone really noticing and an amazing escape route being so close to the exit. It was also prime classroom real estate to assess the reaction of twenty or so people whose lives were also about to be deeply affected.
We had just begun looking over a worksheet when our principal, Mr. Wailonis, came over the loud speaker to tell us a plane had crashed into a building in New York City and that any teacher that wanted to see the news was more than allowed to turn on the television. Mr. Conway turned to one of the few channels our classroom TVs actually had. A group of 11 year olds and a late-twenty-something teacher glued their eyes to the image of a sky scraper smoking from an aerial helicopter view. Samantha, the girl sitting next to me, turned to me and gave me a look. No one in that room fully understood what it was we were looking at, but her face told me “this can’t be good.”
The first plane had struck just before 8:50 and it had taken our principal only a few moments before addressing the school. But the bell was going to ring just before 9:00. My prime real-estate seat meant little to me that day when it came to leaving the class. I wasn’t eager to be the first one out the door. As we all filed out of the classroom, I remember looking back quickly at one more image of the television and the scariest image of all--Mr. Conway’s expression. The last thing I remember before walking out was the sheer terror and confusion written all over that man’s face. That’s when I think I realized that this was probably more than an accident.
Our principal had left it up to each teacher to decide if they wanted to show us the news. I went straight into math class, completely cut off from what was going on only a short hundred miles away. For the rest of the day, my teachers told us that this was not a big deal and there was still much we needed to cover curriculum-wise. There was still pre-algebra, and things like the dangerous effects of smoking on my health to learn.
I remember sitting in health class when one of the secretary’s had called another 7th grade girl to the office. Her father had been in NYC that morning for business and thankfully, was OK. I had never before that day cared so much about what was on the news and I desperately wanted to figure out why there was panic in the air even though every adult in the building claimed there wasn’t.
I went home to find the news turned on, but I had a limited amount of time before I had to go to my babysitting job. I was covering for a girl down the street who normally watched these kids. September 11th was supposed to be her tryout day for the middle school soccer team. All after school activities had been cancelled that day and she came over to the kids’ house to sit with me and show me around while we waited for them to get off the bus. Of course we stopped at the television and turned on the news. Two eleven year old girls listening to adult banter and watching live footage of a smoky metropolitan city attempted to make sense of the nonsensical.
She told me her parents had told her that it was more than likely a group of Middle Eastern people who had done this and that these people didn’t like us for being Americans. That made no sense to me. I was 11. I understood, to a degree, that a world outside my own existed but hatred for an entire country was unfathomable in my realm of reality. I almost didn’t want to believe her but I had been given no other explanation to counter her argument.
The kids came home and she ran to greet them at the end of the driveway. I was nervous as I wanted to make a good impression on these kids and I wanted them to like me. She however was far better at it since she knew them. It was a boy only 7 or 8 years old and his sister who couldn’t have been more than 5. They were in first and third grade and had no idea that the world was changing. She gingerly grasped the little girl’s shoulders and asked her if anyone at school had said anything about the news today. They both replied no but the little boy was acutely aware that it was a bizarre question to be asked. In what we thought were our wise-beyond-our-eleven-years, we attempted to explain to children not much younger than ourselves what had happened, or at least our interpretation of it. It wasn’t long until their mother had been sent home early from work and my very first babysitting job lasted no more than half an hour and I was never even alone with them.
Today, I think about what their interpretation of what that day must be to them. They were far too young to understand this was a major catastrophe. Before that day, the word “terrorism” hadn’t even existed to me. I knew not a world where many perils didn’t exist and I would never again know a world where the “Attacks on 9/11” didn’t play an integral role in my safety everywhere I went. But I had known, albeit for a short amount of time, that such a world existed. I could only begin to equate it with the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Born more than 40 years after it happened, I knew it as a major event, but not one that had direct impact on my own life.
Nine years later, I was spending my last fall semester in college in Washington, D.C. to study journalism. It was an amazing opportunity that opened my eyes to a career path I had never once thought of before. During our trip to the Newseum, many of us took a great fascination to the 9/11 exhibit. It wasn’t as big as it had been made out to seem but there was more than enough to make you feel something. A small room with a documentary was featuring how journalists attempted to figure out how to draw the line from making a story to being a human knowing there were lives to save. At least one newspaper from each state hung on the wall with the front page news of what had happened. And around a large piece of what was once the World Trade Center stood a group of kids I pegged to be about middle school age. I couldn’t help but bring myself to talk to them.
“This is an awesome place for a field trip,” I commented
The little girl that heard me, who had obviously been taught a little too well on the consequences of Stranger Danger, barely made eye contact with me when she said yes. I asked her what grade she was in and she replied “7th.”
“You guys are the same age I was when this all happened,” I said
“Oh,” was all I got in response.
I don’t really blame her. That day wasn’t real to her. She was a mere toddler. Like my days before the Internet, her pre-9/11 life was non-existent. She and her fellow classmates only know the World Trade Center towers to be a pile of rubble, the Pentagon to be a place that was attacked but rebuilt, that field in Pennsylvania to be another place where a plane struck down. None of it really happened to her it was all merely told to be so in her eyes. The idea that so many were alive and have no idea what happened that day is an amazingly crazy thought.
Throughout the last ten years, I’ve often wondered what this day is to all the people who are younger than me. I think of the poor children born on and after that day and the world they would never know otherwise. I think of the children who today are 7th graders and were merely a year or two old at the time. I sometimes look upon young children and when I realize they’re the same age today as those kids I babysat then, I almost feel bad for them; sometimes because they’ll never know quality programming like 90’s Nickelodeon, but more often because they live in a world where terrorism is a constant threat. They live in a world where most if not all of their lives, our country has been overseas attempting to fight back.
Each and every year I think about those moments in Mr. Conway’s class, I remember his face and the seemingly opposite looks I got from the other teachers attempting to give off the impression that nothing was wrong that day. But more often than not, I wonder what impression we are teaching to today’s youth that only know about what happened today ten years ago simply because we told them it happened, not because they were here to witness it.
Whatever happens in the future and however that day is played out in history books, it is a day that will never be forgotten. A day that not only changed America, but the entire world. September 11, 2001 was a day that made us more fearful of what may be to come, but more united in attempting to keep it at bay.
May God bless those who lost their lives or loved ones on this day, those who came to protect and serve our country because of it, those who sat at home in fear and horror, and especially to those who don’t know a world otherwise. May we never forget how this day changed everything for everyone and may we never forget to remind today’s youth about the impact of what happened.
