We were still living in our second floor, one bedroom apartment and I had fallen asleep on the couch with the TV on the night before. I woke up due to a "shouldn't have slept on the couch" backache and the TODAY Show was on TV. Mere moments before I woke, the first plane had hit and they didn't know what had happened. I was still waking up so my brain hadn't really been able to process what I was seeing. It all sounded like a freak, tragic accident. As I sat there watching and listening them desperately trying to figure out what had happened and what the response was on the ground, the second plane came into frame and smashed into the second tower.
And then we all knew this was no freak accident and I was wide awake and making phone calls. I called my dad, who I knew would be home as he was retired, and he had been watching as well. I remember the first thing he said to me after I asked if he was watching the news: "It's Pearl Harbor again -- we're going to war." While we were on the phone, the Pentagon was hit. My dad rushed me off the phone because he wanted to call the school where my mom worked and make sure they were okay. After we spoke, I called my friend Rob, who I figured hadn't been watching the news because that wasn't his thing. I told him that he needed to at least listen to the news because "some awful shit is going down today". Shortly after hanging up the phone with him, the Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania.
Like many others, I spent the rest of the day transfixed to the TV, watching in equal parts anger and horror. Also like many others, I felt that deep stirring to want to do something, goddamnit but I was stuck in Virginia and there was nothing I could do but sit, watch, hope, and pray. The feeling of being powerless made me even more angry. Seeing the towers collapse live on TV are images that are etched into my mind and they sit beside the horrifying images of seeing the Challenger Space Shuttle explode live on TV while I was in elementary school. In the coming days, the feelings of powerlessness grew; I had nothing to offer the rescue effort except monetary donations and I couldn't enlist in the Armed Forces since I had been classified as PDQ from service at Richmond MEPS five years prior thanks to familial background checks.
In later years, my mom lamented the fact that teachers rushed to turn on their classroom TVs so their students could witness history because what they really did was scar elementary and middle school kids with the harsh reality of life. These kids went from worrying about their homework, their friends, or their hobbies to watching a plane full of people crash into a building and two buildings collapse, killing thousands, live on TV. That made the Challenger explosion seem tiny by comparison.
Every year I see the same memes crop up on 9/11, usually saying things like "I miss the America of 9/12, when we were all united". It's a nice sentiment but it's the definition of looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. I remember 9/12 too. I remember the widespread anger bubbling just underneath the surface of that unity. I remember people attacking Islamic Mosques with rocks and bricks and Molotov cocktails. I remember people physically assaulting any Muslim they saw, accusing them of being terrorists. I remember people demanding blood, war, and death -- some people even openly demanded we drop nuclear bombs on the entire Middle East as retribution. I remember how that unity, along with the desire hold someone immediately accountable, led to a bipartisan Congress giving President Bush nearly unlimited military authority, leading us into an aimless 20 year war in Afghanistan and a war-of-convenience with Iraq. I remember how that unity was exploited by well-meaning politicians in order to pass the USA PATRIOT Act, which vastly expanded government and police powers and curtailed our civil rights.
So, no, I don't miss the nostalgia-colored America of 9/12 -- I miss the naïve America of 9/10 when the biggest story of the day was: "Did Congressmen Condit have anything to do with Chandra Levy's disappearance?". The days before terrorism fundamentally changed who we are as a society.
Unfortunately, there's no going back.
