I still don't know quite what it means, and I've had 10 years to think about it. Is it a day of mourning for those lost 10 years ago; of celebrating the selfless heroics of rescue workers; of acknowledging the mistakes we made and innocents we killed in our response, or... all that, and resolving to do better, and be better, and learn from it? It also didn't happen in a vacuum, but it's treated that way. I know the board is crawling with historians. The media went overboard yesterday to the point I couldn't bear to watch. (We "remember," already.) But what does it mean? What will it mean in 50 years? Any insights? Tom
Mine, among millions of stories. I was at school that day. Of course I remember. I remember the day so well, the video, the classroom discussions, the girls openly crying and he boys pretending to not cry. One teacher believed the right thing to do was to incorperate the events into hs lesson, another to give us the day off from any work, another to pretend like everything was fine and push through it. They were all wrong. There was no right thing to do, and doing nothing was never a possibility. Above all, for me there are a few moments that stand out the most in my memory. Event 1: A classmate of mine rushes into third period and shouts "Hey yo, they KAMIKAZIED the World Trade Center!" My first thought: What's the world trade center? Event 2: My foreign policy teacher enters the room, out of breath "They just hit the Pentagon." My first thought: Oh my God, this is serious... Event 3: A classmate expresses fear that our very school is to be the next target. Our english teacher calmly explains that the chances of that are as close to zero without being zero as it possibly could be. Nope, the hysterical student was convinced that we were next. My first thought: SHUT UP! There was way to much going on in my mind to bear much else. Event 4: Watching the video replays on TV with my uncles. One of them says "Yooooo, that's crazy! Hey, wanna take a road trip and go see it?" My first thought: No.
My first thought was a quote from Paul, "I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him."
