Remember, Remember

I was in 7th grade.

I remember the shirt I was wearing.  A white 3-quarter sleeve with green and blue boteh.  I think I still wore my hair long.

It was lunch time when I heard anything akin to information.  Caitlin was speaking, whispering really, in some unrecognizable code, lest the lunch monitors overhear our conversation.  She was trying to explain what was going on.  The Deville Twins (a reference from Rugrats) had been attacked, and Lil (not Phil - Lil is the one with the bow) got an axe to the head.  Liz, or maybe Chelsea, was disagreeing.  It was the other way around.  Or maybe both.

I was so confused.  GK was trying to convince her just to say it straight, but no dice.

It wasn't until later that day that an announcement came over the PA system.

Several planes had crashed along the East coast in several major cities.  The suspected leader was Osama Bin Laden.  Of course, I was practically deaf at the time, and all I could hear was "Aladdin." They wouldn't turn on the news.  We were supposed to going through the rest of the day.  Not think about it.

I got home that afternoon after school finished that day in a blur.  My dad was already home, and I could hear CNN coming from the living room.  "Bin Laden", I finally heard correctly.  Not that it mattered to me at the time.  It was still just a faceless name.  My parents didn't talk to me about it.  Not much, aside from an offhand comment that the term "terrorist" is really only one side of the coin.  It was just some terrible thing that happened.  Everyone seemed to want to shield me from the horror.  So instead I was comforted by chain emails and slogans.  Some would lead me to believe that it was a hoax.  And the Binch became evil, funny, and distant.

It's said that the people of the 60s remember exactly what they were doing and where they were the moment they heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.  My senior year sociology teacher said that 9/11 would be the same for those of this generation.  To an extent, she was right.  I remembered. But I couldn't comprehend.

You would think that a 13-year-old would be old enough to understand what was happening.  It's entirely possible that I did, but chose to stay in my ivory tower, or else have to really contemplate how ugly human beings can be.  But then, and even now, all I can really wonder is - what is it that drives us to kill other humans? Not just those suicide pilots on the 11th of September 2001, but anyone.  Just.  ...Anyone.

The video itself isn't all that important. I couldn't find a better version of the song.

Until the next.