Charlie's Life

I was in high school in 2001 and I remember what happened on September 11th eight years ago. I recall walking through the hallways after the first plane hit and thinking, “What kind of idiot pilot can’t see a 100-story building in the middle of a city?” Quite obviously, and justifiably, my brain did not immediately assume that NYC was suffering the greatest terrorist attack in history.

When we got to our next class, we turned on the television to check the news before class started. The second plane hit and the teacher went to turn of the TV. Under protest from the students she kept the TV on and we watched, our jaws slacked and eyes watering, in realization that we were no longer witnessing an interesting and tragic news story, but instead a history-making mass-murder, a terrorist act, and something that would change our country forever. The bell rang and we shuffled to our next class. All we did the rest of the day was watch TV, mourn the loss of untold thousands, and hypothesize about what was going to happen next.

I was walking through the hallway when someone told me about a rumor that the Pentagon had been bombed. Other people were saying the White House was evacuated, that President Bush couldn’t be found and no one knew where Air Force One was. Hearing that other flights were in the air was terrifying. All I could think was that some small, previously obscure country was about to become famous right before it disappeared off the map. I was partly right.

I was into current events then as I am now and so people started asking me what I thought would happen next. I had no idea, but I said I had a hunch Iraq was involved. This turned out to be mostly untrue (they weren’t directly involved in 9/11, I know, but they did help support the international structure of terrorist organizations and they were soon enough part of the War on Terror). Interestingly, most people I was talking with had the same first thoughts.

I went home and watched news coverage until early in the morning. I can’t find the picture anywhere, but I remember an image of hundred of ambulances lined up on a bridge going into New York City. That was maybe the saddest image I’ve ever seen. Thousands of people ready to help survivors from the collapsed towers, but there weren’t any to help.

Schools canceled sporting events because no one was sure what would happen next. Looking back, it was a bit ridiculous to cancel football games in West Des Moines, IA, but who knew that at the time? Maybe the next wave of attacks was going to hit small communities – places where people felt safe. Of course, a second wave never came, and still hasn’t because of the tremendous efforts of our military, the intelligence and law enforcement communities, and the Bush administration.

Those are my memories. What’s really weird for me is when Jamie comes home from teaching and talks about all the kids in her class. Mostly seven and eight year olds, they weren’t even born when 9/11 happened. I ask Jamie if they talk about it in class, and she says some teachers do, and some don’t. One teacher has a 9/11 kids book to help her explain what happened. How do you relate such stories to kids whose worlds are so small and simple?

Studying history can often be abstract. You read about a battle in the Middle Ages where tens of thousand of people died or look at pictures of men on the moon, and you are never able to grasp the emotional sense that contemporary people experienced. Going through 9/11 (and not even having been in NYC or DC at the time) was traumatic and impactful. But kids who were five years old when it happened, or not even born yet, will never experience that. I had a 9/11 documentary playing the background the other day and even I commented to Jamie that it felt like watching something about Pearl Harbor. Still, reading things like this is really frustrating.

This is why it’s so important to consciously remind ourselves of the importance of such events – to never forget and never allow history to repeat itself. It’s also why it’s so disappointing for our current leaders in Washington to consciously try to put such events behind us, out of our collective consciousness. Calling terrorist acts “man-made disasters” and declaring the War on Terror over in favor of “overseas contingency operations”, diminishes the importance of historical events, and falsely lulls people into a sense of complacency.

It’s not fear mongering to remind people of real-life dangers. In fact, for our government not to do so, and instead pretend that everything is just fine, would be, and is, irresponsible. We are still in danger of more attacks. We are still fighting the same battles overseas that we have been for the past eight years. Renaming things to sounds more tolerable just makes it harder for our government to keep our nation safer; harder to remind people of the terrible intentions of our enemies.

September 11th, 2001 – Never Forget, Never Surrender. I never will.