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Everyone remembers where they were.

I was in my second period ninth grade english class, which had just begun. I don't remember if the announcement came before the second plane hit or after. I do remember the multiple announcements, as horror after horror unfolded. My introduction to the terrorist acts was a strange one...it wasn't a jarring image on TV, or the subdued panic of a news reporters voice; just the solemn, grave tone of my high school principal as I stared at my generic school desk. That desk is always the fist thing that appears in my mind when someone mentions 9/11.

School halted. Students too emotionally distraught to go from classroom to classroom were allowed to huddle in the library where news coverage blared in every corner. Most people remember being glued to the TV. I don't remember seeing a TV until I got home from school. My September 11th terror didn't come from the television...it hit much closer, and in a very real way.

You see, I grew up in New England, in your typical Massachusetts middle class suburb. This means lots of kids with lots of parents in the commuter workforce, traveling daily to Boston, Providence, and even...New York City.

My remembrances of that day were story after story of kids not knowing where their parents were. Not knowing if they were okay. In 2001 cell phones had not become the hand-extension of teens today. Access to phones was more difficult, and most phone lines to traveling parents were jammed. For most of my high school, our day was filled not with the terror of graphic images displayed on a screen, but the terror of busy signal after busy signal.

One of my closest friends had a mother who had left for Logan that morning for a business trip to New York. I'll never forget her panic; what time was her mother's flight? What time?? We couldn't get in touch with her. The small details she gathered in the four hours of seaching for information offered no comfort, just more terror. Her mother's flight was scheduled for a 7:45 takeoff...the exact time Flight 11 was scheduled. She was flying American Airlines. Her father couldn't reach her. Small details that could so easily spell doom, but there was still that hope that they did not. I know so many Americans went through this exact ordeal that day. Most received good news. Thousands did not.

Thankfully they got in touch with her mom sometime around lunchtime. She was ok. Her flight was the next flight. She actually sat next to the passengers of Flight 11 in the gate waiting area. That was how narrowly she missed death...a choice of plane schedules.

In New England, everyone knows someone with a near miss story. In this part of the country we were all touched in a very real way by 9-11...the horror of that day spared few from real panic for loved ones.

I was only 14 at the time, and it is only now, almost 11 years later, that I am revisiting that day by watching media coverage on youtube and reading articles online. My mother shielded me from much of the human drama and wouldn't let me watch TV. (I've always been a fairly emotional individual.) I've been going back to that day not just for curiosity, but for clarity and understanding. Because of that day, we have been at war for ELEVEN YEARS. Why have we been in this war? This chaotic war on terror?

I remember how I felt, hearing we were going to war. At the time, I was glad. I knew we would succeed. We would crush those responsible, our country would have justice. In my eyes, through my American history education, we were the good guys, the crusaders for justice. We would be in, out, and a overwhelming and quick victory would be celebrated.

Hope for expediency waned in 2004. The next year I very nearly forgot we were at war while I prepared for college. There were brief snaps of reality, as men in our town were killed in action every few months. In 2008 our presidential debates centered on bringing our men home. 7 years of war was too much. But now, in 2012, there is not even a whisper of it. It is still happening...in many ways, happening even more and expanding its borders of combat. But there is not a whisper about it.

We said we would Never Forget. But we do forget, daily. We forget about our troops, we forget about the horror of human suffering and death on a grand scale. We forget about the sanctity of life as we enjoy our iPads and gossip about Rob and Kristen and haggle over the future of the American dollar. We have never even stopped to acknowledge the suffering of our men and women in the line of fire, and the hundreds of thousands of civilians that have died in the Middle East.

I recently came across this speech from JFK, delivered a week before he died. This was the speech we needed to hear on September 12, 2001. Not a speech for more death, more dying, a fruitless vendetta for revenge. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Commencement-Address-at-American-University-June-10-1963.aspx

Someday, I will have to explain this day, this world, to my son. I pray that when that time comes, I have a happy ending for him.

RIP to all those that died that day, and the many days and years following.