I can't exactly say that I'm glad that I was alive to experience the trauma America went through during this event, but I do remember where I was. I was just ten years old, in the 5th grade, and I was sitting in the car waiting for my mom to take me to school when she rushed out, her face contorted with worry, turned on the car and turned the radio to the news station. She had just gotten off the phone with my dad and I asked her what he wanted. She said that airplanes had just crashed into The World Trade Center. Now I was old enough to understand that airplanes crashing into buildings was obviously out of the ordinary, but "The World Trade Center", "The Twin Towers", these elusive phrases my mother, the people on the radio, and my teachers at school would keep using throughout the day meant nothing to me. I was ten. I had no idea what the The World Trade Center was and that everything I was hearing was the description of a beyond horrific, unimaginable event coming true.
I now know just how important those two massive buildings were. I understand that they were full of Americans working for other Americans. I understand that the bravest men and women in the world died running into the falling, burning building to try to save the people trapped inside. I now understand (hardly) that thousands of innocent lives were lost because a few extremists full of the worst hate decided to commit such an awful act of terrorism. Terror is the word used to describe it, but words can hardly express the gravity of what happened.
Every year for the last nine years of my life, on this day, the 11th day of September, news channels play the footage of those airplanes crashing into those towers and I sit beside my dad with tears trailing down both of our faces for all of the people who died unexpectedly, for all of the people who knew they were probably were going to die going in but did it anyway to help other, for all of the soldiers who ended up fighting in the longest war in American history after the fact, and for all of America who was struck with terror just like us on this day nine years ago.
Music: I Won't Back Down - Tom Petty
