Friday, September 11, 2009

9/11

Today is the eighth anniversary of 9/11, as I am sure you're aware.

At the time, I was about six, so it didn't make much impact on my brain, but I still remember where I heard it. My mom took us to a thrift store. Apparently, she had gotten a phone call earlier in the morning from a friend of hers- the phone wasn't working anymore though, because there were too many calls being sent, so we just went about our day.

They had a radio in there, and the place was just like still. The counter lady was leaning against it, staring at the radio, and they were talking about how something had fallen. Of course, my six-year old brain- "Oh cool! Buildings are falling!!" but mom didn't look at all happy, so I knew it was bad. The significance of this event did not really sink in until I was about 10 or 11.

2,604 people died in the World Trade Center
87 died on American Airline 11
125 died at the Pentagon
59 died on American Airline 77
59 died on United Airline 175
40 died on United Airline 93
Total- 2,974
I'm not going to bring politics into this, so I'm not going to say anything about the Iraq war. Or the Afghanistan war. Or the PATRIOT act. Or...
Gah, I'll just shut up now.

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4 comments:

Kendra Logan said...

I remember where I was too. My sister and "brother" and I were doing homeschool together when my grandma called. My mom got all flustered and upset, which NEVER happened, and went to get my dad who was in his office in the back of the house.

We kids didn't really understand what was going on, so we just kept doing our school work. My mom and dad went into the living room and turned the TV on, and we wanted to watch TV, too.

They didn't let us for a little while, then my mom came into the school room and told us to come see what was going on. She explained that "bad guys" had flown planes into pretty much the most important buildings in New York. She told us to draw pictures of what we saw happening.

I didn't understand a lot either, but I knew it was bad and sad. My mom kept our pictures, and it's interesting to see what registered in my seven-yer-old mind.

~Kendra

Cassandra said...

I remember 8 years ago too. It was the first "bad" thing on the news that my parents had let me watch, but I too didn't fully grasp what had happened until later in my life.

Today I'm saying a prayer for everyone who died that day and that God will protect our country from future attacks (even though Obama has lowered our defense budget to lower than pre-World War 2 times)

Ok, I'll leave politics out too. :D

Blessings,
Cassie

Alex said...

We are fighting a war against people who had nothing to do with 9/11, and homeland security has increased to a huge level. I remember a little about today, but I think that in some ways it's important not to remember it. If we stop, and remember and slow our lives down, the terrorists win. They got us to stop and slow down, and will be remembered, even if it's negatively.

Sun Tzu said...

It is also a bit different if you can focus on how people felt and acted back then and what parts of that were good and what weren't. 6 is probably too young to remember those things clearly. Remembering where you were and what you were doing is probably as close as that gets for most people anyway.

For future reference, feel free to comment. For a teenager you seem to have figured out how to look at the world with some neutrality pretty well. It cannot be that easy to do (I don't remember it being easy in social terms anyway). Reading things that you don't necessarily agree with is crucial and ultimately allows you to propose things that you know nobody will agree with you on with confidence simply because you will understand and know their criticisms ahead of time.