nmah5194.xml

nmah5194.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-10-01

I woke up that morning feeling fine. I got dressed and brushed my teeth just like every other morning. But when I came downstairs to tell my mom I was ready to go to school, she was just getting off the phone and she was scared. She was confused and worried and she spoke softly. She told me she had just gotten off the phone with one of my older brothers, Micah. He lived in New York at the time, in Greenwich Village. She told me a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
"Huh?"
She said she didn't understand either. It didn't make any sense to either of us. Planes belong in the sky. Planes don't fly into buildings; that's the kind of thing that happens in movies and comic books. This is reality we're talking about here. But despite the fact neither of us could believe it, she said it had to be true, because Micah sounded scared, and Micah is never scared.
So we got into the car and turned on the radio. And it was everywhere.
"Planes have collided with the World Trade Center!" "They're on fire!" "The North Tower has just fallen!"
Neither of us could speak. It was still comic book. Maybe it was a joke. And I was trying to recall, just what were the World Trade Center Towers? I had never seen them before. I'd been to New York, but I had only heard of them; that they were very tall.
In fear of a possible attack on our Yeshiva High School, the Rabbis dismissed us after prayers. I still couldn't believe it. My friend Sam and I went to the Ralphs up the block to browse the magazine rack. We were talking like it was just another regular day.
Finally I went home. I sat in front of the TV I rarely watch for the rest of the day. They played the same images over and over. I kept thinking, who's crazy enough to do this? Don't they know America is going to nuke'em? I wasn't able to do much else the rest of the day.

I can't say the events of September 11th have changed my life. And it makes me sad to admit that. I was shocked. I was afraid. But it, like many other things in my life, faded with time. Maybe it began to affect me less because it affected so many people, and it was feeling like I was part of some mass cult. Maybe it began to affect me less because I had never had a connection with the towers or the people they held. Maybe I wasn't affected because I'm a callused teenager and I see plenty of gory, shocking movies, and I wasn't able to distinguish between fiction and reality because it was presented to me on a television screen. Sadly, the only meaning I find in the events of September 11th is evidence of our mortality - of which I had some perception beforehand - and evidence that Arab extremists will not rest until all non-Arabs are dead or subservient to them. I realized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wasn't just about land and religious rivalry, it was about Arab hate for everything other than them. While I can't say my life is any different now than it was a year ago before September 11th, I can say that those events succeeded in making me sick.

We should remember that there doesn't need to be a rational cause to commit a horrible misdeed. In America, we have Western thinking and clear-cut logic. We should remember that in all things human, all over the world, our way of thinking and our way of life is not typical. Very often, we say things to the tune of, "But why would someone strap explosives to their chest and walk into a pizza shop? It doesn't make any sense." September 11th must be a constant reminder of the power of baseless hatred.

Yes I did. The flag has assumed the role of a show of solidarity. It isn't just the American Flag. It's the America taking-a-hit, licking-its-wounds, and-getting-back-out-there-to-be-the-best-country-in-the-world Flag. It has become a sign of memorial and a sign of strength, but only in relation to September 11th.