Remembrance

Realizing 9/11 was 25 years ago made me feel old this morning, but also reflective. I'm not particularly proud of my reactions on that day, but it felt important to write down as true a recollection of that day as I could.

9/11 became a day of stories. There were countless heroes and even more tragedies. I'm of the belief that it was one of those days that abruptly changed the course of the world. Personally, I was only lightly touched by the attack. I knew no one in the towers or in the planes, and for the most part, my world went on with no more disruption than anyone else's.

But it also feels as though younger generations don't understand what that day felt like, and I wanted to contribute, in some small way, to what it was like to see what I saw.

A morning like any other. Sleep in until my sister wakes me up. Roll out of bed, toss on some clothes and grab my bags. Rock music blaring out of tinny speakers in my green, battered Ford Taurus, better than any caffeine. Grab a parking space and stroll to school, ready, if not eager, for another day of my senior year.

Only the hallways are empty. Everyone is in a room, eyes glued to the TVs that are almost never used. I go to Mr. Stuart's room. He's a weightlifter and calculus teacher, the closest I have to a role model in the school. On the TVs the trade center is burning. People are leaping from windows. Teachers are crying. A plane has struck.

No one knows anything. An accident? An attack? Then the second plane hits. I know, now, what it feels like for the world to drop out from under you. To know what the world you thought you knew was a comfortable lie. We're under attack.

The bells ring. No one moves. The teachers don't even try to get us to class. More news trickles in. Rumors of more planes. My buddy is sitting next to me. Just signed his papers a few weeks ago. Army. A place to give him a purpose and pay for college. Now a ticket to the middle east on the government dime.

I'm a selfish young man. I mourn the deaths I witness, but fear turns my thoughts inward. War is coming. It must. This is my generation's Pearl Harbor. No college, no college girls. Just the draft.

I couldn't have guessed what would happen in the days that followed, but I knew one thing that morning, and it ended up being a true thing.

That day was a fault line in history, a day when the world changed forever.

First draft images: