It's Been Four Years
I think we all remember the exact place, the exact moment, when we learned of the attacks that took place on our soil four years ago. I think we all remember that other moment, just an hour or so later, when we knew for sure that our world was changed forever. I was a sophomore in college, and over the course of that morning one of my professors said to me "This is the end of your generation's innocence." He was right.
We've been through many things together since that horrifying day, that day which I remember as if it were just last week. And we will all live many more moments together - but none will ever be quite the same again.
We will never forget.
posted by JBD @ 8:25 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I remember where I was Sept. 11. In a training meeting about interoffice email at Broward Main Library. A coworker came in saying a plane hit one of the towers. It just registered to me an accident, and remembered a plane hit the Empire State Building during WWII. When I left the meeting, I headed to the main library floor where they had pulled out a TV showing fuzzy poor reception of the local news. I ran into an old coworker from another library branch and she told me the second tower had been hit too.
TVs had been pulled out onto every floor, none of them with good reception (no cable, and the fm antennae were missing). We kept watching for an hour, and I swore I saw one tower collapse, but a coworker claimed it was just the fuzzy reception. I went back to another tv, and a different channel, and you could hear the commentators that it had happened. At that point the library admin announced all buildings were being evacuated.
I remember walking through down Ft. Lauderdale from the library past the County Government building, where a young couple were trying to open already locked doors. They didn't know. I told them about the towers, about the Pentagon, about a fourth plane buzzing about. I told them one tower was already "gone, just flat out gone," and walking away still stunned by that fact.
The rest of the day was spent stunned, waiting for hours at a blood center, finally heading home to two little kittens who looked at me funny while I cried for an hour.
I think everyone needs to read Lawrence Kaplan's terrific piece entitled "American Idle." He challenges Jeremy's and others' rather cliche assertion that ' on 9/11 America changed forever.' In doing so, however, he urges Americans to become much more civially engaged and he bemoans our lack of sacrifice. It appears in the The New Republic and can be found at TNR.com.
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