WE WILL NEVER STOP REMEMBERING.
September 11th of 2001 held probably the weirdest thing that has happened to my home country since I've lived in it. Most of the people I know only have fuzzy memories of it, but I remember the day quite clearly.
I was about eight, in the third grade, and my mother woke me a few minutes earlier than she usually did for school. She took my sister and I, still in our pajamas, downstairs, where my dad- this was about a year before they divorced- was sitting in front of the television. It seemed weird to me, because the TV was never on in the mornings, and the screen was showing a series of explosions, over and over again. The little experience I had of explosions was in cartoons I watched; this seemed unreal. It was a removed event. It didn't touch me.
My dad drove me to school. Everyone in my class of first, second, and third graders was in a state of supreme confusion. A couple kids thought it was an accident, one thought it was a movie, another thought it was a joke. We were all definitely out of it. Our teacher, Ms. Wetherell, had no idea what to do- whether she should have all of us discuss it, or whether our parents should be the ones to tell us. At any rate, I was only at school for a couple of hours before Dad came back to pick my sister and I up early. He drove us to a restaurant downtown for lunch- I was in love with restaurants of all kinds when I was younger, so this made me inordinately happy- and explained to us that two planes had been intentionally crashed into the World Trade Center, decimating the two towers and killing a great number of people. It was an oh moment, a spark in the dark. I finally got it.
Except that I didn't, not really. I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that someone would steal a plane with so many people on it and fly it into a building with so many people on it with no hope of escape for themselves. The purpose didn't compute. I was shocked, but not saddened. Until later that evening when one of my parents, I don't recall who, made a cursory statement about families on one of the planes going to Disneyland.
Disneyland. It was that exact moment when everything became real. I started to cry, quietly, to myself, not like I'd ever cried before. They were going to Disneyland, and now they were dead. They were going to ride the tea cups and see Mickey Mouse and scream on the roller coasters, and someone killed them.
And I don't think I ever saw people- as a species, as a common kind, capable of causing pain beyond imagining- the same way again.
I was about eight, in the third grade, and my mother woke me a few minutes earlier than she usually did for school. She took my sister and I, still in our pajamas, downstairs, where my dad- this was about a year before they divorced- was sitting in front of the television. It seemed weird to me, because the TV was never on in the mornings, and the screen was showing a series of explosions, over and over again. The little experience I had of explosions was in cartoons I watched; this seemed unreal. It was a removed event. It didn't touch me.
My dad drove me to school. Everyone in my class of first, second, and third graders was in a state of supreme confusion. A couple kids thought it was an accident, one thought it was a movie, another thought it was a joke. We were all definitely out of it. Our teacher, Ms. Wetherell, had no idea what to do- whether she should have all of us discuss it, or whether our parents should be the ones to tell us. At any rate, I was only at school for a couple of hours before Dad came back to pick my sister and I up early. He drove us to a restaurant downtown for lunch- I was in love with restaurants of all kinds when I was younger, so this made me inordinately happy- and explained to us that two planes had been intentionally crashed into the World Trade Center, decimating the two towers and killing a great number of people. It was an oh moment, a spark in the dark. I finally got it.
Except that I didn't, not really. I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that someone would steal a plane with so many people on it and fly it into a building with so many people on it with no hope of escape for themselves. The purpose didn't compute. I was shocked, but not saddened. Until later that evening when one of my parents, I don't recall who, made a cursory statement about families on one of the planes going to Disneyland.
Disneyland. It was that exact moment when everything became real. I started to cry, quietly, to myself, not like I'd ever cried before. They were going to Disneyland, and now they were dead. They were going to ride the tea cups and see Mickey Mouse and scream on the roller coasters, and someone killed them.
And I don't think I ever saw people- as a species, as a common kind, capable of causing pain beyond imagining- the same way again.