story8642.xml

story8642.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-11-12

My roommate, a German exchange student, received a phone call from her boyfriend in Germany. He told us to turn on the TV, because the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. My first reaction was, "isn't there more than one world trade center...and what are the world trade centers?? What significance does this event have to me? ...and then I said that we didn't have cable and that we didn't have any news channels...he insisted that this would be on every channel, and it was. I remember feeling ignorant as an American, that I heard the news from somebody in Germany first, and that he new what the buildings were and I didn't. After pondering why the attacks happened, and considering my first reactions, it all came together. We as a country, are fairly ignorant about the rest of the world and our own country. A country with this much power needs to be more informed about the world in order to do a better job, and be more understanding of the other countries that make up the world. Also, we are desensitized to violence due to the proliferation of violence in our movies and TV shows. I can't even count the number of people who agreed with me when I said that I stared at the images on TV for the first few minutes without even feeling anything.