Where Were You?

Watching all the September 11th memorials and tributes over the weekend stirs up many emotions in me. I have noticed how people often tell where they were when they heard about or witnessed the terrorist attacks ten years ago, but we often don't think about how much our lives have changed (except at airports). Those attacks seem very recent, but yet when I think about my life ten years ago, a lot has happened since then! What really astounds me is how many kids have grown up and perhaps had a very different perspective than those of us who were at least a little more mature and able to somewhat comprehend, if not the violence and motivation, at least the repercussions. I was talking to Chris' cousin Aarika, 20, yesterday and had to pause a minute when she stated that she was in fourth grade when the terrorism occurred. Wow! What could you possibly know or understand at that age?

I was 17 on September 11, 2001. Not that I was wise and experienced in the ways of the world, nor had I really ever thought about terrorism much. I had read the Caroline B. Cooney book The Terrorist and was a little nervous when my family traveled to London in 1999, since the book was set in the London underground system. I could never fathom a large-scale terrorist plot occurring on U.S. soil. I was in first period English (Mrs. Crane's class) and we were all just hanging out and waiting for the bell to ring when a long-time friend of mine, Mary Lee, came into the class and sat down and started telling Mrs. Crane what she had heard on the radio. Mary Lee was in a dual-credit class at the local junior college and was driving back to high school for second period when she heard that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. Sadly, and perhaps tellingly, I didn't even know what the World Trade Center was. The bell rang and I headed to second-period Psychology, a blow-off class I took for an easy A that was taught by Coach McQuaid. I told Coach what was going on and that we should go to Mr. Barrett's room (Mr. Barrett was our well-loved, popular Physics teacher) to watch the footage. Of course, no one knew what was coming as far as the second plane and the collapse, but I guess I just had a compulsion to watch what was going on. Either that, or I wanted to get out of doing any busy work. Coach said no at first, but I told him I was going to watch anyway (where did I get the nerve?!) and so he relented and brought the whole class. We were all watching it on one of those standard-issue school TVs, and I remember feeling so detached as we watched the second plane fly into the building and then, awhile later, the towers collapse. It was like watching a movie with good CGI. I hate to sound flippant about it, but my brain just didn't have the capability to believe what we were seeing and hearing. Many of us turned to Mr. Barrett for some kind of an explanation, to help us understand, and I remember his wisdom which at the time seemed outrageous: he told us this would most likely lead to war.

Like all of America, I watched a lot of TV coverage for the next several days, but it still really didn't sink in for a long time. In fact, I vividly remember the moment the gravity of the whole day really hit me--I was driving to Wednesday evening church services (not sure why I was going by myself) and I began to notice that all the stores, churches, schools, etc. had changed their marquee signs to read "God Bless America." I started to cry, thinking of the lives lost and the hatred displayed by people who targeted America because we are a "Christian" nation. It was actually very touching to me how the tragedy brought people into the churches and caused Americans to pray and unite, and I never heard liberal or atheist criticism about how everyone was saying "God Bless America" and was openly talking about prayer. It seemed that all the controversy over religious vs. secular was just forgotten in the wake of the terrorism against a country that they at least considered Christian.

One more thing: our preacher has been teaching recently about Islam, and I guess the point I have gotten from his lessons and research is that the Muslim religion is not peace-loving like many claim. If you read the Qur'an, you can see in black-and-white that their "prophet" instructed them to resort to violence and any means possible to subjugate anyone not sharing their faith, including the "people of the Book," which refers to Christians and Jews. Just a note, not to encourage prejudice and hatred, but a cautionary point that we should not just sit by and allow the religion of Islam to gain a foothold in America.