Ten Years Later

I usually try and avoid writing things not related to film, but I feel the 10th anniversary of my generation's formative event warrants a brief post.

I was about 12 years old on 9/11/2001, and had just started junior high school. I was extremely smart and very misanthropic at the time, with a big IQ and a bigger ego. For me, global events were something of passing interest but completely distant. Politics was a complicated game adults played with no affect on me. Wars were Clinton's push-button conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq. I had heard of Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan, but they were names from a History Channel special, nothing more. And certainly I didn't understand economic issues more than I do now. It just seemed so distant, something that wouldn't affect me, my family or friends. Certainly not in rural Pennsylvania, where nothing ever happened.

On that morning, I walked into Mrs. Nemanic's science class. As we were getting ready to start, a kid came in yelling that "Some psycho flew a plane into the Twin Towers!" The words sent a shock through the tweens gathered in the dinky science room. Mrs. Nemanic grinned indulgently and told him something like, "That didn't happen. If it did, it would be all over television." Then she turned on the television. I don't need to tell you what we saw.

Even as I looked at the images of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, it still seemed distant, however shocking. I was more confused than scared at that point. This was happening in New York and D.C., not here. Then I heard that a plane had gone down "just outside Pittsburgh." Which scared the bejesus out of me. Turns out that Flight 93 went down just 15 miles from our school. The world had come to Somerset.

The rest of the day was a blur. We spent some time huddled in the school cafeteria with cops around, in case al-Qaeda were making their way to Somerset Junior High. When it was determined safe they sent us home early, and my brothers and I came home to find my dad test-firing all of his firearms in the backyard. I remember receiving phone calls by various relatives and getting Papa John's pizza for dinner, watching Channel Six all day for news updates. It was a blur of names and places and figures: George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Osama Bin Laden and so many others. I went to bed realizing I'd survived a historic day, but too young to make anything of it.

I was too young to appreciate the magnitude of what had just happened. When President Bush gave his speech to Congress a few days later, I was bored. The 9/11 memorial on Friday did draw some emotion out of me, hearing so many patriotic songs, hearing addresses from Governor Ridge and our church chaplain Father Mark, but mostly I wanted to get home and listen to Ennio Morricone music. To be a narcissistic, insular child again!

Ten years have passed and so much has changed. We're still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a new war rages in Libya. The economy has collapsed and our new President struggles to pick up the pieces of Bush's disastrous second term. As I've gotten older, I've tried to hone my interest in current affairs, but our increasingly toxic political climate disgusts me to no end. Disgust at partisan bickering aside, however, I never unlearned my key lesson from 9/11: that what happens in the world is of vital importance, whether it's in the mountains of Afghanistan or just down the street from your house. Thus, better to interact with and learn about it than to push it away and pretend it doesn't it.

While watching all the memorial tributes this weekend, I felt a stirring of the heart. Patriotism, sure, but something more profound than that. I feel for the 3,000 people, Americans and others, killed by hideous fanatics, and their families and friends. I feel for the lost optimism of a prosperous country just entering a new millenium. And most of all, I hope that we, as a country, can move on while not forgetting the attacks, the victims or their importance to all of us.

Back to regular posting soon.