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The view from a quarter century later...
It's 8 o'clock on a Tuesday and I am just starting my shift. Ordinarily the TVs on display for sale would be playing a demo-loop fed from a DvD-player behind the counter but this morning they're tuned to CBS. A small crowd has gathered to watch as Tower 1 burns. I'm supposed to be answering questions, and trying to upsell people on the company's membership discount program and extended warranty plans but my heart's not in it. I watch the second plane hit live. I remember the collective gasp, and the horrified silence that followed. Then like Colonel Kurtz's diamond bullet it strikes me. This is no mistake. This is a deliberate act. An act of courage, an act of perfect crystalline Will.
100s of people dead in an instant because somebody made a choice. By the end of the day that count would be in the thousands. I would later find out that a friend of mine had lost an entire branch of their family tree in that fireball. An Aunt, an Uncle, two young cousins, and a dog all reduced to ash in the impact of United Flight 175 with Tower 2's southern face.
As the morning progresses there are rumors of other hijackings. Over a dozen planes are unaccounted for or not responding to ATC. There is rampant speculation about what target will be hit next. The President is in the air, and National Guard jets are being scrambled. The rest of my shift passes in a blur, but certain images remain seared into my brain.
Under my initial reaction of rage and helplessness something simultaneously imperceptible and momentous has shifted. It's cliche to say that 9/11 was the death of innocence for a generation but there is a truth to it. Things that had been mere abstract concepts to me when I woke up that morning, "Free Will", "Horror", "Heroism", "Good", "Evil", "Civilization", and "Civilization's Enemies", were suddenly real, immediate, and vital to me in a way that they hadn't been 24 hours previously. I can look back on my life today and say with confidence that, philosophically, the Charlie that woke up on the morning of September 12th 2001, was a fundamentally different person from the one who had gone to bed on September 10th.
In the interests of full disclosure I am tempted to turn this post into a rant about how politics and war are downstream of culture, and to wax philosophical about 9/11 as an act of theater, but I also feel like doing so would cheapen the moment, and be disrespectful to those who died 25 years ago today.
So instead I will ask, where were you on the day they wounded New York?
I was in pre-K, or possibly preschool actually, so it’s a hazy memory, but I do remember it. I think I’m basically the youngest possible person to actually remember 9/11; I suspect this is a factor (among many, but still) for why I’ve always identified more with “young millennials” than “old zoomers”. I grew up in a town in North Jersey where people commuted into NYC for work, the kind of place where you can see the skyline very clearly if you get up on a hill, so it was pretty personal for me and mine.
I can remember being pulled out of school early, but I can’t remember how the teachers were acting or what they told us (I assume at this point I was still just thinking “yay, half day!”). My mom picked me up and to distract me, or possibly to distract herself, took me downtown to go to a certain toy store that I liked. It was a very nice day to walk around after all, perfect sunny weather. By this point I remember noticing that she was stressed out, as though something was wrong. When we arrived, the store had closed early for the day, and in fact there was almost nobody around on the whole “Main Street” area. This was weird, so I asked my mom why everything was closed. She said that everyone had gone home because there had been “a big tragedy” (in retrospect, I’m not sure if she knew yet that it was a deliberate attack, not an accident… she probably did by then, but I don’t know what time this was all happening). I asked her, “what’s a tragedy?” Can’t really imagine being in her position for that one, but she explained — I don’t remember how much she told me, but at least to the effect of “something very bad and very sad has happened in New York, and people have gone home to talk to their families” — and everything felt very serious.
It was almost certainly the first time in my life I had ever really felt somber, or had the realization that truly bad things do happen in the world. I assume afterward when we went home I just played in the yard or read a book or whatever other normal kid stuff, but that moment really stuck with me, and I do remember exactly where I was.
Obviously not everyone my age actually remembers the day, but it definitely had a big impact on all of us in town. I grew up in a small town, so we basically knew all of the same people all the way from the beginning of school through graduation. One of my classmates lost his dad in the attack.
One of my history teachers (who was supposed to catch a flight the very next day in fact) made a point of reminding students what it was like in the area at the time, since none of us could remember. Our town was under the takeoff and landing paths for an airport, so normally you’d hear a vague background noise of jets all day. In the weeks after the attack, it was silent, punctuated every couple hours by the roar of a fighter jet on patrol.
I think the day had a huge formative impact on everyone my age and a bit older. Really planting the idea that yes, there are sometimes real enemies out there. Despite being a thoroughly left-liberal town/school, we never really had an anti-American set of kids, even among the SJW-types and the edgy punk types (who I was adjacent to) they’d at least keep that kind of thing to themselves. I recently watched the documentary “102 Minutes That Changed America” with my wife, which is a really excellent compilation of footage from various people on the ground on the day of the attacks, played in real time as events progress, and including some street interviews. It was an emotional experience watching ordinary people reacting and slowly realizing what was happening; surprisingly raw even now, frankly enraging, dredging up a latent feeling of “fuck the people who did this” that’s definitely etched deep in my bones in a personal kind of way.
One more aside: when the SEALs finally killed Bin Laden in 2011 (8th grade for me), it was a party atmosphere in the whole school. Basically everyone came in (spontaneously, with no real coordination, we just all heard about it in the morning and reacted the same way) decked out in American flag T-shirts and hats and whatever like it was the 4th of July and we’d just won the Super Bowl all at once, and nobody got much work done all day.
Until you mentioned you lived in a small town, your account is so close to my experience that I thought you might be one of my classmates or neighbors. I think we must've lived very close to each other - my mother was on her way over to Highland Avenue when the second plane hit. We literally have the same story of going to the toy store and finding everything closed and the streets deserted - though in my case it was my birthday that week, and I doubt we tried to go to the same toy store. Judging by your timeline I'm about 2-3 years older than you.
Definitely not the same town. There wasn't much reaction at all that I could tell in my school, my town was super ultra liberal (starts with an M). TBH the fact that it was my (liberal) girlfriend who told me that bin Laden got got actually made me think it was bullshit for a hot minute.
Anyway, the world is surprisingly small sometimes. Hello not-quite neighbor! :)
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