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I learned in my psychology class at ACC that eye-whitness testimony is not absolute because the human brain likes to reconstruct memories rather than play them back like a video. When you recall a memory, your brain fills in bits and pieces it lost over time to make a cohesive narrative.
My memory of 9/11 is much like that.
My mother says that it’s impossible for me to remember 9/11 because I was only three. Still, I do have a very clear memory of something that was important enough for me to cling onto 25 years later.
I have a memory of my father sitting on the couch drinking coffee and watching Fox News (I'm assuming it was Fox News because that has been his news source my entire life). There was news footage playing of people hiding behind cars, big clouds of dust everywhere, people screaming and running away.
As a child, I thought the world was ending. To this day, I can't say if that news coverage was in the days following the attack or on an anniversary. My parents can't recall, either. I do, however, remember my father shaking his head and saying something like, "Now we are at war."
Though my memories of 9/11 are murky to say the least, I grew up in the time of America when security was tightened, terrorism became an everyday threat, and the 24-hour news cycle constantly played footage of young men being blown up in tanks in the middle of the desert in some far away country that looked like Mars.
Being the anxious child I was, I saw terrorism as an immediate threat.
I imagined planes crashing into my home, my elementary school being bombed, bridges collapsing, et cetera, et cetera.
I remember an adult telling my class in elementary school that terrorists were plotting across America to hijack school buses and crash them or plant bombs.
Of course these were all child-like anxieties, but learning about 9/11 in school and hearing adults talk about the tragedy and ongoing terroism in America, made the event feel dangerous, threatening, and almost so expansive it had risen to mythical proportions - something like the storming of Troy in the Odyssey or D-Day in WWII.
As a child I knew the tragedy of 9/11 and the threat of terrorism was not mythology. It was real, and thus created an irrational fear of anybody who looked like the terrorists I would see on the evening news.
When I was in first or second grade, I had to get tested for allergies. They poked my forearms with these little plastic tubes and I had to sit and watch the affected areas irritate, turn red and itchy.
After about 15 minutes the doctor came in and I was more fearful of him than the little red patches on my skin.
The doctor had brown skin, wore a turban, and spoke with a very strange accent. I couldn't make eye contact with him. When he left my mother nudged me and told me to stop being dramatic or something like that.
"He's Middle Eastern, not a terrorist," she said.
Though I did not experience 9/11 like people who are five, 10, 20 years older than I, there is a sense of understanding of how singularly significant 9/11 was to our nation and the terror that followed.
I remember throughout my education my peers giving presentations of their fathers and mothers who were serving in the Middle East. I remember soldiers being invited to classrooms to discuss the war and 9/11. I remember creating care packages and writing letters to soldiers while in Girl Scouts.
By the time I entered high school, the war in the Middle East had become so ubiquitous that it no longer seemed significant.
"Yes, America is still at war. Yes, gasoline is still expensive. What's new?"
When I was in 9th grade I had the opportunity to attend a trip to Washington D.C.
When you step foot in the nation's capital, you instantly feel the weight of everything America has endured in the last 250 years. It feels like hollowed ground when you stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial or walk the grounds of Arlington Cemetery.
On the first evening, we visited the Pentagon Memorial just as the sun was setting and the lights started to glow.
Like many memorials in D.C., they are seriously treated as places of remembrance. Imagine rounding up 40 pre-teens and teens and telling them to be quiet! But, like I said, the air in D.C. is heavy and it is impossible to not feel the looming structures around you watching and observing, asserting their power, and demanding respect.
Our rag-tag group of country bumpkins zipped our lips and wandered the memorial in silence. The Pentagon hovered over us not far from the memorial and our guide later pointed out how the areas of the Pentagon that had been repaired after 9/11 were replaced with a darker brick. This way, visitors and pedestrians are always reminded of the plane crash and the people who perished.
I was reminded how tragic 9/11 was and the weight war carries.
My memories of 9/11 are second-hand and my experiences are mostly what 9/11 caused rather than what it was like to live during that tragedy. Comparable events in my life are maybe when Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans in 2005, the Great Recession in 2008, or the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012.
We are also reminded this year of the one-year anniversary of the assination of Charlie Kirk.
Speaking on the behalf of my generation, I do not believe that my peers would have responded the same as the young men and women did when 9/11 happened. I struggle to believe that my peers would flock to recruiting offices to enlist or sacrifice their livelihoods to defend our country. Instead, I imagine my peers would flock to TikTok or Facebook and make some grand argument as to how one political party caused this disaster and if you are smart you won't lay down your life for an elitist regime.
My peers would probably protest, burn American flags, and mock those who wish to sing the Star Spangled Banner before every sporting event.
My generation's 9/11 could happen tomorrow. My peers may not remember what life was like then, but we sure do remember what life was like after 9/11. It is important that though we may not have those first-hand experiences, we acknowledge the tragedy and prepare ourselves to answer a call when tragedy strikes again. Because it always will.