Time is a funny thing. Eleven years can seem like a lifetime ago. I can’t tell you what my favorite TV show was 20 years ago or what kind of music I liked, or even who my best friend was. But I can still remember the morning of September 11, 2001 –exactly one year ago today –in vivid detail…
I remember being home sick, laying on the couch watching General Hospital. I remember being so mad that my mom changed the channel to the news instead, and I thought, “okay, a random building is on fire, what’s the big deal?” Being a naïve eleven-year-old, I figured it was some sort of accident and that firefighters would be there and everything would be fine.
Just as I was huffing in annoyance and leaving the room to go watch the basement TV, I heard my mom arguing with whoever was on the phone (my dad or my aunt I think), “No, it’s not the Pentagon, they’re showing the World Trade Center… What do you mean it’s the pentagon, I’m looking at it right here!” Then she changed to another channel and there was a completely different building on fire… I really still didn’t understand what was going on, but even at 11, I knew that two building being hit by planes at basically the same time couldn’t be a coincidence. My know-it-all, eleven-year-old self deduced there must be some sort of defect causing planes to malfunction.
So even though I knew exactly what was going on, I decided to make sure I was right so that I could say “I told you so.” So there I was, standing on the stairs, watching the basement tv on mute and standing on the stairs evesdropping on my mom’s conversation (like any good eleven-year-old would do), when I see another plane hit the other building! I honestly had no idea what was going on at this point, but I could tell that my mom was scared.
As the day went on, and I actually watched the news attentively for the first time in all my eleven years, I began to understand what was going on… As I watched the towers fall, I realized that even though the firemen and the ambulances were there, everything was not going to be okay. When I watched President Bush give his speech on T.V., I realized that this wasn’t some crazy accident where all the planes had malfunctioned at once; I began to understand that someone had done this on purpose.
I didn’t know a single person who was in New York that day. I didn’t know a single person who lost anyone that day. At the time, I didn’t know a single firefighter, police officer, or other emergency responder… But my world was still turned upside-down. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel 100% safe. In books and history class, you hear about bad things happening to other people around the world, but you never think it can happen to you. In all the history lessons, the wars happened on the other side of the planet and America just sent soldiers over to help (and we always won.) For the first time in my life, I could suddenly relate to “Molly” from the American Girl books, who lived during WWII and they had blackouts and air raid drills at school all the time because “we are not invincible. Somebody might bomb us.”
Suddenly what had seemed so far from reality was actually happening right then and there. Suddenly every city in the country seemed like a terrorist target for some reason or another. Cincinnati has GE who makes aircraft engines for the military, therefore we are a target. Suddenly my eleven year old self no longer had the sense of safety and security I had always known.
Now, eleven years older and (hopefully) eleven years wiser, I know that I was never really safe, and that 9/11 simply made me understand that a bit earlier in life. Now, I remember the innocent victims of hatred and violence who lost their lives that day; I remember the brave men and women who gave their lives to try to help them; I think about the people who are grieving today in remembrance of lost loved ones; I pray for those fighting overseas to help sustain the sense of safety and security that today’s American eleven year olds still have.
Have you forgotten?
How it felt that day
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten?
When those towers fell
We had neighbors still inside
Going through a livin’ hell…
-Darryl Worley, “Have You Forgotten"
