Was a senior in HS, also spent all day watching, except in Math class because that teacher couldn't handle constantly watching the news. Which I understand more now than I did then. I remember...
Was a senior in HS, also spent all day watching, except in Math class because that teacher couldn't handle constantly watching the news. Which I understand more now than I did then.
I remember very specifically some group taking credit for the attacks, and then the spokesperson for said terrorist group denying it shortly after with a real "We don't want that smoke" vibe.
And that's the only thing I can't confirm about my memories of that day.
Still, no desire to watch again. It's a tragedy, but so is how we reacted to it as a country.
Honestly, I get aggravated by how people still fixate on this over 20 years later. It was the catalyst for orders of magnitudes more death in the countries that were subsequently invaded, with...
Honestly, I get aggravated by how people still fixate on this over 20 years later. It was the catalyst for orders of magnitudes more death in the countries that were subsequently invaded, with gleeful support from a disturbingly large portion of the US population...and the same people who fixate on this event still are often deniers of the ~3K people dying daily in the US throughout the height of the pandemic.
There isn't constant nationalist social signaling about the 1.2M people who died in the US from COVID before we stopped keeping track. So it sure as hell isn't about the tragedy...
The response to 9/11 is a point of great national shame, and should be remembered for that, not further flag-waving.
I think we've historically been so insulated from terrorism, it can be hard to remember how absolutely shocked and stunned we were as a nation. But I think much of the lingering pain from the...
I think we've historically been so insulated from terrorism, it can be hard to remember how absolutely shocked and stunned we were as a nation. But I think much of the lingering pain from the attacks themselves remained in NYC and DC. And because that's where our news and politicians and the UN and all that are, the pain has reverberated past what the rest of the country necessarily feels, especially over 20 years later.
But I agree, our actions afterwards as a nation - government and individual, were just a big lashing out in pain, hurting and killing so many more, including our own people, including innocents in the US and abroad, out of some sense that it would heal us if we could kill enough people or the right person. And it really didnt. Bin Laden may be as close to the sort of person I can say deserved to die, but his death didn't heal the wound we keep re-opening over and over.
I remember 9/11 for that. Never again to fall into a Toby Keith induced rage.
Here's my tiny bit of solace. Does December 7th evoke any emotion? My guess is probably not. In fact, you might even wonder why I pick such a specific date. December 7th, better known as Pearl...
Here's my tiny bit of solace.
Does December 7th evoke any emotion? My guess is probably not. In fact, you might even wonder why I pick such a specific date.
December 7th, better known as Pearl Harbor Day, was once called "A day that will live in infamy". But now, over 80 years later... The vast majority of the population doesn't even give it a second thought. The day that would be responsible for launching the US into WW2... And fewer people care each year.
I expect that 9/11 is going to meet the same fate. You just have to give it a few more decades. Also, I agree it"s a damn shame that COVID doesn't have the same signalling- far more people died. But 9/11 gave us a very specific, very human enemy and it also happened at a very specific time. But, and pardon me going political here, note who the President- or more specifically, the party- was during BOTH of these.
These days, I live overseas, but I still see the remembrances from friends in America. Combined with what I've since learned and experienced... Well, I say it's a tragedy that so many people died, but I have no other strong emotion attached to it compared to folks back in America. The closest would be a feeling of regret, I suppose- it was a preventable tragedy that would change the world (ok, mostly the US) for the worse.
I don't agree with this, because 9/11 is literally named after its date so you don't have to know the event's name and date as separate facts (although I do think people will forget the year in...
I don't agree with this, because 9/11 is literally named after its date so you don't have to know the event's name and date as separate facts (although I do think people will forget the year in the coming decades). "Pearl Harbor Day" the phrase definitely is meaningful to me, and although it took me a sec I did know what date you were talking about, but it's not remembered as "dec 7 -> emotional response" it's "dec 7 -> pearl harbor day -> emotional response"
small edit: to go back even further, I could not begin to tell you the date of the Lusitania sinking (also I'm not 100% of the year, I think about 1914?), but I absolutely have negative associations with "Lusitania"
(to avoid spreading lies on the internet I checked wikipedia and it's 1915)
I wholeheartedly agree. To me the most personal thing 9/11 signified in my life was when I lost my father to Fox News. In my memory, Dennis Kucinich had written articles of impeachment against...
I wholeheartedly agree. To me the most personal thing 9/11 signified in my life was when I lost my father to Fox News.
In my memory, Dennis Kucinich had written articles of impeachment against George W Bush largely over his handling of the war, and I still harbor bad blood over every single congressperson who didn’t vote for it - which is to say, all of them.
I only wish that I could say it were a unique period of insanity, but honestly it feels like it’s been nothing but insanity since then.
I'm almost 30 and I don't remember the 9/11 attacks. I was too young when they happened. I think it's worth considering that for a large (and continuously growing) swath of adults, this is a...
I'm almost 30 and I don't remember the 9/11 attacks. I was too young when they happened. I think it's worth considering that for a large (and continuously growing) swath of adults, this is a historical event that they don't have the same strong emotional connection to.
My little sister is about your age. I am 10 years older than her. Most of our general cultural/social experiences are very similar, but 9/11 was a big exception to that. I was in high school when...
My little sister is about your age. I am 10 years older than her. Most of our general cultural/social experiences are very similar, but 9/11 was a big exception to that.
I was in high school when it happened. We spent the day going through the motions — changing classes, taking out our books — but all we really did was watch the news in stunned silence. I mean, there was a lot of talking, and even some joking ("How bad a pilot do you have to be to hit a skyscraper?" sort of stuff), after the first plane hit, but no one had anything to say after the second plane. I can't remember overhearing a single conversation after that.
Meanwhile, my sister and the other kids with her definitely did not watch the news. I think the adults around them tried to make their day feel as normal as possible because they would have been very confused and scared. I imagine that for children who were more directly exposed to what happened (e.g., schoolkids in NYC who may have seen the smoke), it was likely a much more memorable event.
I think if I hadn't been in high school (for example, if I had been a university student, where I didn't have a TV), it wouldn't have been as impactful for me. I think that day affected me a lot more deeply than it affected my parents or most of my other relatives, for example, because they were at work. They didn't watch the second tower get hit or the two towers collapse live like I did. They heard about it first from other people and then watched the news after the fact.
Watching the news that day was a very surreal experience for me — an intense feeling that I was witnessing the world shift trajectory and knowing that it would never be the same again. The only other time I have felt like that was one day in the early stages of the pandemic, when it went from hypothetical to real for me: I was driving on the expressway past sign after sign all reading "STAY HOME" and listening to the radio list off cancelled event after cancelled event. I hope I don't have many more experiences like this.
The stories of people seeing it on the news while in class always give me chills. I don't remember that part, I was too young. But my wife remembers. A teacher came into the room to tell her...
The stories of people seeing it on the news while in class always give me chills. I don't remember that part, I was too young. But my wife remembers.
A teacher came into the room to tell her teacher to turn on the news after the first tower was hit. Then she saw the 2nd tower get hit soon after. The teacher started crying and left the room, leaving a class full of 8 year old children alone for an hour with the TV on live 9/11 footage. She was afraid of traveling into cities into her late teens, and she lived in GA at the time.
This is really interesting to me, as it tracks with my own experience as I watched the video today. I was in college in 2001 (in the midwest), and on 9/11 I watched the news briefly before class...
I think if I hadn't been in high school (for example, if I had been a university student, where I didn't have a TV), it wouldn't have been as impactful for me. I think that day affected me a lot more deeply than it affected my parents or most of my other relatives, for example, because they were at work. They didn't watch the second tower get hit or the two towers collapse live like I did. They heard about it first from other people and then watched the news after the fact.
This is really interesting to me, as it tracks with my own experience as I watched the video today. I was in college in 2001 (in the midwest), and on 9/11 I watched the news briefly before class and learned that a plane had hit the twin towers, but then went off to class. College is much more like a job than high school, so no one was sitting around in class watching the news. I only learned the rest of the story once I got back to my room and had a chance to catch up.
Watching this video created a much more intense reaction in me, and I think it might be because I was watching it play out minute by minute. I wanted to be thorough, so I avoided skipping ahead (or reading ahead in the comments). It was overwhelming. I had to pause and step away a few times. The nuance that appears when you are viewing the parts in between the broader strokes of events makes the experience more real than hearing a reporter recap the day.
Yeah, I wasn't even 5 years old when it happened. My little sister and I were watching Barney according to my mother. iirc they didn't even cut to it as breaking news (presumably because they...
Yeah, I wasn't even 5 years old when it happened. My little sister and I were watching Barney according to my mother. iirc they didn't even cut to it as breaking news (presumably because they didn't want to traumatize the target audience of Barney & Friends), so my mom heard about it on the phone. But all that is me half-remembering what my mom told me when I was a bit older, so grain of salt.
I can definitely understand how much more heavily something like this would impact you as a high schooler, though. I think everything hits harder as a high schooler, but especially something like this. Especially if you're watching it live, I can't even imagine that experience. The pandemic, at least, started coming up on things gradually enough that it wasn't truly out of nowhere, even if the moment things actually got real was sudden.
A great point to consider. Another great point for any person to consider is that the world didn't start with their generation.
I think it's worth considering that for a large (and continuously growing) swath of adults, this is a historical event that they don't have the same strong emotional connection to.
A great point to consider.
Another great point for any person to consider is that the world didn't start with their generation.
Acknowledging that a lot of adults are from a given generation and have different experiences (including emotionally) than those who came before them is not at odds with the idea that the world...
Acknowledging that a lot of adults are from a given generation and have different experiences (including emotionally) than those who came before them is not at odds with the idea that the world didn't start with their generation, and it comes off as kind of condescending to respond to me that way.
Other commenters and I have been able to have interesting, constructive conversation about our different experiences in the replies to my comment, so I think it's worth some introspection on why...
Other commenters and I have been able to have interesting, constructive conversation about our different experiences in the replies to my comment, so I think it's worth some introspection on why someone pointing out why not everyone is in the "I don't need to see it again" category bothers you so much.
This is still a very impactful event for me, 23 years later. I lived across the Hudson. You could see it all happening from my grandparents home in West New York, NJ. I was 6, in 1st grade, and my...
This is still a very impactful event for me, 23 years later. I lived across the Hudson. You could see it all happening from my grandparents home in West New York, NJ. I was 6, in 1st grade, and my father worked 3 blocks away from the Trade Center. Miraculously, he stayed home sick that day, so he was home when my mother picked me up from school. I had a friend in school whos father had evacuated the north tower.
Being 6 at the time, I only remember so much, but I remember the fear and anxiety in my parents. For years I was terrified of going into cities, even after we moved years later. My wife, who has lived her whole life in the south eastern US, had the same issue as well. I wonder how many other people had the same issue, being children at the time of the attack.
I watch a video like this one every year around the date, I guess as a way to remember those people that died that day, as well as to reconnect with the feelings I still remember having as a child.
I was in college at the time, but far away in Arizona. I remember the feelings I had that day, even though I personally have no connection to what happened in any kind of direct way. I was...
I was in college at the time, but far away in Arizona. I remember the feelings I had that day, even though I personally have no connection to what happened in any kind of direct way. I was surprised how intensely my feelings came back watching this (I skipped forward to around the time of impact and watched for about 20min).
Aside from the easy to name feelings like fear, anger, sympathy and others; there is an unique collective horror that accompanys something like this that is profoundly upsetting. That feeling where you feel shock and fear and it is amplified by the absolute certain knowledge that millions of other people are feeling that same feeling at the same time. That was what made the COVID pandemic so terrible, was that feeling being conjured up again and again, for months. With 9/11 it at least only happened once, on a single day. And even though we were afraid it might happen again, it didn't and we got to slowly start moving on from it.
I think it can be cathartic and helpful to reconnect with things like this, but I absolutely understand others who do not want to in any way. This is a scar that will persist in the US collective psyche for a very long time.
The near-miss stories blow me away. My father in law missed the train at Newark Penn because he wanted to find - of all things - some cigarettes. He would've been across the street. I also was...
Miraculously, he stayed home sick that day, so he was home when my mother picked me up from school. I had a friend in school whos father had evacuated the north tower
The near-miss stories blow me away. My father in law missed the train at Newark Penn because he wanted to find - of all things - some cigarettes. He would've been across the street.
I also was talking to my grandmother's caretaker and on 9/11 her son was kinda on the verge of feeling sick, so she decided to let him go back home on the the way to school and doubled back. She was working at the Pentagon.
For me it's this article https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/september-11th-attacks-world-trade-center-rick-rescorla-the-real-heroes-are-dead I don't read it every year, but most years I do.
I watch a video like this one every year around the date, I guess as a way to remember those people that died that day, as well as to reconnect with the feelings I still remember having as a child.
It's funny you mentioned being afraid of cities. The house I grew up in is similarly close to NYC and in the JFK flight path. I was also a similar age on 9/11 with a dad who worked near the WTC...
It's funny you mentioned being afraid of cities. The house I grew up in is similarly close to NYC and in the JFK flight path. I was also a similar age on 9/11 with a dad who worked near the WTC (he was on the way to work, and my mom called him and told him to turn around).
What I was afraid of, was the noise of the planes flying over my house. I can remember the dread, though I don't remember very much of the day and immediate aftermath.
I was a high school freshman more than half way across the country in the suburbs of SLC at the time. I remember walking into my first period class, before the first bell, and seeing the news on...
I was a high school freshman more than half way across the country in the suburbs of SLC at the time. I remember walking into my first period class, before the first bell, and seeing the news on TV (teacher always had news on in the morning). I don't think I saw any of the attacks live, due to the time differences, but I do remember watching the towers fall on live TV.
If watching the news replays of the second plane being swallowed by the South Tower was already insane, seeing these giant buildings collapse in the middle of Manhattan was something else entirely. Same goes for watching people jump out of the twin towers. Just a total "what in the fuck am I seeing right now..."
9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, and later, the War in Iraq were my first introductions to domestic and international politics. At 14yo, I was old enough to understand what was going on and I started paying attention. I also think in some ways, as cliched as it sounds, I knew the world had completely changed that day. And not necessarily for the better. We're all still feeling the ramifications of 9/11, 23yrs later.
I was eating breakfast in DC watching the news when it cut to the first tower smoking. They were talking about how something must be terribly wrong at air traffic control. No one could wrap their...
I was eating breakfast in DC watching the news when it cut to the first tower smoking. They were talking about how something must be terribly wrong at air traffic control. No one could wrap their mind around what was going on.
Saw the second plane hit live. When the Pentagon was hit, I went outside and saw the smoke.
What a watershed moment in how life in America would change.
Just chiming in to say I appreciate the share. I was a self absorbed college student at the time of the attacks, so didn't dig in to all the news at the time. Over the years there has been a lot...
Just chiming in to say I appreciate the share. I was a self absorbed college student at the time of the attacks, so didn't dig in to all the news at the time. Over the years there has been a lot of misinformation floating around as well. So I appreciate the work put into this. I think I'll watch it exactly once.
Edit: I just finished watching. It was surprisingly emotional, and I had to take a few breaks to collect myself. I was not directly connected to anyone involved, but it was really hard to watch events unfold nonetheless.
I went home from work that day and like many others spent the next several weeks watching that over and over again. I don't need to see it again.
Was a senior in HS, also spent all day watching, except in Math class because that teacher couldn't handle constantly watching the news. Which I understand more now than I did then.
I remember very specifically some group taking credit for the attacks, and then the spokesperson for said terrorist group denying it shortly after with a real "We don't want that smoke" vibe.
And that's the only thing I can't confirm about my memories of that day.
Still, no desire to watch again. It's a tragedy, but so is how we reacted to it as a country.
Honestly, I get aggravated by how people still fixate on this over 20 years later. It was the catalyst for orders of magnitudes more death in the countries that were subsequently invaded, with gleeful support from a disturbingly large portion of the US population...and the same people who fixate on this event still are often deniers of the ~3K people dying daily in the US throughout the height of the pandemic.
There isn't constant nationalist social signaling about the 1.2M people who died in the US from COVID before we stopped keeping track. So it sure as hell isn't about the tragedy...
The response to 9/11 is a point of great national shame, and should be remembered for that, not further flag-waving.
I think we've historically been so insulated from terrorism, it can be hard to remember how absolutely shocked and stunned we were as a nation. But I think much of the lingering pain from the attacks themselves remained in NYC and DC. And because that's where our news and politicians and the UN and all that are, the pain has reverberated past what the rest of the country necessarily feels, especially over 20 years later.
But I agree, our actions afterwards as a nation - government and individual, were just a big lashing out in pain, hurting and killing so many more, including our own people, including innocents in the US and abroad, out of some sense that it would heal us if we could kill enough people or the right person. And it really didnt. Bin Laden may be as close to the sort of person I can say deserved to die, but his death didn't heal the wound we keep re-opening over and over.
I remember 9/11 for that. Never again to fall into a Toby Keith induced rage.
Here's my tiny bit of solace.
Does December 7th evoke any emotion? My guess is probably not. In fact, you might even wonder why I pick such a specific date.
December 7th, better known as Pearl Harbor Day, was once called "A day that will live in infamy". But now, over 80 years later... The vast majority of the population doesn't even give it a second thought. The day that would be responsible for launching the US into WW2... And fewer people care each year.
I expect that 9/11 is going to meet the same fate. You just have to give it a few more decades. Also, I agree it"s a damn shame that COVID doesn't have the same signalling- far more people died. But 9/11 gave us a very specific, very human enemy and it also happened at a very specific time. But, and pardon me going political here, note who the President- or more specifically, the party- was during BOTH of these.
These days, I live overseas, but I still see the remembrances from friends in America. Combined with what I've since learned and experienced... Well, I say it's a tragedy that so many people died, but I have no other strong emotion attached to it compared to folks back in America. The closest would be a feeling of regret, I suppose- it was a preventable tragedy that would change the world (ok, mostly the US) for the worse.
I don't agree with this, because 9/11 is literally named after its date so you don't have to know the event's name and date as separate facts (although I do think people will forget the year in the coming decades). "Pearl Harbor Day" the phrase definitely is meaningful to me, and although it took me a sec I did know what date you were talking about, but it's not remembered as "dec 7 -> emotional response" it's "dec 7 -> pearl harbor day -> emotional response"
small edit: to go back even further, I could not begin to tell you the date of the Lusitania sinking (also I'm not 100% of the year, I think about 1914?), but I absolutely have negative associations with "Lusitania"
(to avoid spreading lies on the internet I checked wikipedia and it's 1915)
I wholeheartedly agree. To me the most personal thing 9/11 signified in my life was when I lost my father to Fox News.
In my memory, Dennis Kucinich had written articles of impeachment against George W Bush largely over his handling of the war, and I still harbor bad blood over every single congressperson who didn’t vote for it - which is to say, all of them.
I only wish that I could say it were a unique period of insanity, but honestly it feels like it’s been nothing but insanity since then.
I'm almost 30 and I don't remember the 9/11 attacks. I was too young when they happened. I think it's worth considering that for a large (and continuously growing) swath of adults, this is a historical event that they don't have the same strong emotional connection to.
My little sister is about your age. I am 10 years older than her. Most of our general cultural/social experiences are very similar, but 9/11 was a big exception to that.
I was in high school when it happened. We spent the day going through the motions — changing classes, taking out our books — but all we really did was watch the news in stunned silence. I mean, there was a lot of talking, and even some joking ("How bad a pilot do you have to be to hit a skyscraper?" sort of stuff), after the first plane hit, but no one had anything to say after the second plane. I can't remember overhearing a single conversation after that.
Meanwhile, my sister and the other kids with her definitely did not watch the news. I think the adults around them tried to make their day feel as normal as possible because they would have been very confused and scared. I imagine that for children who were more directly exposed to what happened (e.g., schoolkids in NYC who may have seen the smoke), it was likely a much more memorable event.
I think if I hadn't been in high school (for example, if I had been a university student, where I didn't have a TV), it wouldn't have been as impactful for me. I think that day affected me a lot more deeply than it affected my parents or most of my other relatives, for example, because they were at work. They didn't watch the second tower get hit or the two towers collapse live like I did. They heard about it first from other people and then watched the news after the fact.
Watching the news that day was a very surreal experience for me — an intense feeling that I was witnessing the world shift trajectory and knowing that it would never be the same again. The only other time I have felt like that was one day in the early stages of the pandemic, when it went from hypothetical to real for me: I was driving on the expressway past sign after sign all reading "STAY HOME" and listening to the radio list off cancelled event after cancelled event. I hope I don't have many more experiences like this.
The stories of people seeing it on the news while in class always give me chills. I don't remember that part, I was too young. But my wife remembers.
A teacher came into the room to tell her teacher to turn on the news after the first tower was hit. Then she saw the 2nd tower get hit soon after. The teacher started crying and left the room, leaving a class full of 8 year old children alone for an hour with the TV on live 9/11 footage. She was afraid of traveling into cities into her late teens, and she lived in GA at the time.
This is really interesting to me, as it tracks with my own experience as I watched the video today. I was in college in 2001 (in the midwest), and on 9/11 I watched the news briefly before class and learned that a plane had hit the twin towers, but then went off to class. College is much more like a job than high school, so no one was sitting around in class watching the news. I only learned the rest of the story once I got back to my room and had a chance to catch up.
Watching this video created a much more intense reaction in me, and I think it might be because I was watching it play out minute by minute. I wanted to be thorough, so I avoided skipping ahead (or reading ahead in the comments). It was overwhelming. I had to pause and step away a few times. The nuance that appears when you are viewing the parts in between the broader strokes of events makes the experience more real than hearing a reporter recap the day.
Yeah, I wasn't even 5 years old when it happened. My little sister and I were watching Barney according to my mother. iirc they didn't even cut to it as breaking news (presumably because they didn't want to traumatize the target audience of Barney & Friends), so my mom heard about it on the phone. But all that is me half-remembering what my mom told me when I was a bit older, so grain of salt.
I can definitely understand how much more heavily something like this would impact you as a high schooler, though. I think everything hits harder as a high schooler, but especially something like this. Especially if you're watching it live, I can't even imagine that experience. The pandemic, at least, started coming up on things gradually enough that it wasn't truly out of nowhere, even if the moment things actually got real was sudden.
A great point to consider.
Another great point for any person to consider is that the world didn't start with their generation.
Acknowledging that a lot of adults are from a given generation and have different experiences (including emotionally) than those who came before them is not at odds with the idea that the world didn't start with their generation, and it comes off as kind of condescending to respond to me that way.
The aforementioned inverse doesn't come across as attitude neutral either.
Other commenters and I have been able to have interesting, constructive conversation about our different experiences in the replies to my comment, so I think it's worth some introspection on why someone pointing out why not everyone is in the "I don't need to see it again" category bothers you so much.
Same. It was horrifying enough the first time. I don’t need to relive that day.
This is still a very impactful event for me, 23 years later. I lived across the Hudson. You could see it all happening from my grandparents home in West New York, NJ. I was 6, in 1st grade, and my father worked 3 blocks away from the Trade Center. Miraculously, he stayed home sick that day, so he was home when my mother picked me up from school. I had a friend in school whos father had evacuated the north tower.
Being 6 at the time, I only remember so much, but I remember the fear and anxiety in my parents. For years I was terrified of going into cities, even after we moved years later. My wife, who has lived her whole life in the south eastern US, had the same issue as well. I wonder how many other people had the same issue, being children at the time of the attack.
I watch a video like this one every year around the date, I guess as a way to remember those people that died that day, as well as to reconnect with the feelings I still remember having as a child.
I was in college at the time, but far away in Arizona. I remember the feelings I had that day, even though I personally have no connection to what happened in any kind of direct way. I was surprised how intensely my feelings came back watching this (I skipped forward to around the time of impact and watched for about 20min).
Aside from the easy to name feelings like fear, anger, sympathy and others; there is an unique collective horror that accompanys something like this that is profoundly upsetting. That feeling where you feel shock and fear and it is amplified by the absolute certain knowledge that millions of other people are feeling that same feeling at the same time. That was what made the COVID pandemic so terrible, was that feeling being conjured up again and again, for months. With 9/11 it at least only happened once, on a single day. And even though we were afraid it might happen again, it didn't and we got to slowly start moving on from it.
I think it can be cathartic and helpful to reconnect with things like this, but I absolutely understand others who do not want to in any way. This is a scar that will persist in the US collective psyche for a very long time.
The near-miss stories blow me away. My father in law missed the train at Newark Penn because he wanted to find - of all things - some cigarettes. He would've been across the street.
I also was talking to my grandmother's caretaker and on 9/11 her son was kinda on the verge of feeling sick, so she decided to let him go back home on the the way to school and doubled back. She was working at the Pentagon.
Gives me chills.
It was supposed to be my dad's last day at that job. He stayed home because he was "feeling off" and just called in sick.
For me it's this article https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/september-11th-attacks-world-trade-center-rick-rescorla-the-real-heroes-are-dead
I don't read it every year, but most years I do.
That was a beautiful read, thank you for sharing. Another story of sacrifice where someone goes back in to save more people.
It's funny you mentioned being afraid of cities. The house I grew up in is similarly close to NYC and in the JFK flight path. I was also a similar age on 9/11 with a dad who worked near the WTC (he was on the way to work, and my mom called him and told him to turn around).
What I was afraid of, was the noise of the planes flying over my house. I can remember the dread, though I don't remember very much of the day and immediate aftermath.
I was a high school freshman more than half way across the country in the suburbs of SLC at the time. I remember walking into my first period class, before the first bell, and seeing the news on TV (teacher always had news on in the morning). I don't think I saw any of the attacks live, due to the time differences, but I do remember watching the towers fall on live TV.
If watching the news replays of the second plane being swallowed by the South Tower was already insane, seeing these giant buildings collapse in the middle of Manhattan was something else entirely. Same goes for watching people jump out of the twin towers. Just a total "what in the fuck am I seeing right now..."
9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, and later, the War in Iraq were my first introductions to domestic and international politics. At 14yo, I was old enough to understand what was going on and I started paying attention. I also think in some ways, as cliched as it sounds, I knew the world had completely changed that day. And not necessarily for the better. We're all still feeling the ramifications of 9/11, 23yrs later.
I was eating breakfast in DC watching the news when it cut to the first tower smoking. They were talking about how something must be terribly wrong at air traffic control. No one could wrap their mind around what was going on.
Saw the second plane hit live. When the Pentagon was hit, I went outside and saw the smoke.
What a watershed moment in how life in America would change.
Just chiming in to say I appreciate the share. I was a self absorbed college student at the time of the attacks, so didn't dig in to all the news at the time. Over the years there has been a lot of misinformation floating around as well. So I appreciate the work put into this. I think I'll watch it exactly once.
Edit: I just finished watching. It was surprisingly emotional, and I had to take a few breaks to collect myself. I was not directly connected to anyone involved, but it was really hard to watch events unfold nonetheless.