25 Years Later

Today marks 25 years since September 11, 2001. I was in high school, sitting in my Chemistry class when the announcement from the principal came over the loudspeaker.

“…I just want to share some news that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. We don’t know many details, but we wanted to share with you all this sad news.”

I remember how confused everyone was. “Why the heck would he announce that over the loudspeaker?” Remember, I wasn’t in New York, I was in Philadelphia. So it was just very odd. I remember leaving to go to my next class, English. We’re all sitting there just doing our normal routine and I hear behind me “Hey, Jack-son!” Turning around, I see my dad. Even more confused, I ask what he’s doing, and he just tells the teacher that he’s taking me to my dentist appointment, and we just leave. I remember seeing him visibly nervous and kind of shaken. I started having awful flashbacks of when I heard my brother died. I was thinking something terrible happened to my mom or someone else close to me.

I asked him what the deal was and he just said quietly “Didn’t you hear, we’re under attack?” My dad wasn’t tactful sometimes. “Someone flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon! We’re going home, I don’t want you here.”

It took a while to get home, but I remember listening to KYW 1060 on the radio stuck in traffic. I was silent. My dad was silent. We just listened until we got home. When we arrived, we went around to my grandmother’s house, she lived around the corner from us, and watched the news. I still remember walking around there and hearing silence. No planes, no people yelling, no cars. We lived close enough to PHL that it was very noticeable when no planes were in the sky. It was unreal. I can still remember looking up on the corner of 63rd and Wheeler Street and saying to my parents, “I’ve never heard it this quiet, it’s kind of creepy.”

I remember the days following the tragedy. Life was just on hold. School was cancelled for a few days. Television was just the aftermath and analysis of the events. I was a bit too young to care much about the politics of it all, but little did I know that after that day, everything changed for everyone.

I’m not sure why I wanted to write about this today. I’ve never written about 9/11 before as I wasn’t affected as much directly on that day as some of my friends from New York. It’s hard knowing that 25 years have passed since the events and we’re still feeling the aftermath of it all. I think it’s also hard to grasp that at 40, I have spent more of my life in a post-9/11 world than not. I’m at the age where I can still remember what it was like before 9/11, it’s not just a foggy memory. I’m also at the age where I’m seeing my friends have kids who will never know the world before 9/11 but who are learning about it in history class. They’re asking questions about it, and it’s so fucking weird to be part of the generation that can talk about “before 9/11” and “during 9/11.” It’s like watching World War II documentaries where old soldiers are talking about their time in Europe or Japan. Sure, that’s probably a little hyperbolic, but that’s what it feels like at times.

This post is kind of all over the place, but I wanted to write something. I guess I don’t have any other reason to write it except to share my experience, no matter how separated I was from it. But I think no matter how you experienced 9/11, no matter how separated you were from the actual events that took place, we are all still feeling the effects of that one day in 2001.