On September 11, 2001 I was starting my sophomore year of High School in Springfield, Ohio. I first heard the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower in the hallway of my school, from a friend who would go on to serve as a marine stationed in Iraq. I had just left my first period Spanish class, a room in complete oblivion, and he yelled the news to me as I was going to an art class.

The news didn’t really phase me. He delivered it in a “Hey, this happened” tone, akin to a random train wreck in California. Shocking and sad, sure, but certainly not a shocking change in the geo-political zeitgeist. Actually the words that stuck out most to me was “world trade”. Since at the time I didn’t know or care much about boring concepts like trade, the economy or the stock market I completely passed it off as something of an accidental plane crash that at most would piss off rich stock brokers for a week.

Regrettably, I replied to the news with “I don’t give a shit about world trade or the economy” – words even more ironic and cryptic in 2010 America. When I arrived at my art class the teacher was in tears. She was watching the TV as the newscasters tried to make sense of the other plane that had just crashed into the World Trade Center’s South Tower. As the day went on the media had reported the crumbling of the World Trade Center buildings, a plane crashing into the Pentagon and a plane crashing in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

My last class of the day was a social studies class where we entertained the same discussion as the newscasters: who had caused the attacks? Was it Bin Laden? Kadafi? Saddam Hussein? There were thoughts that it was occurring on September 11 as a result of the US-backed coup in Chile that occurred on September 11, 1973. The country of Afghanistan was fresh in our classes mind since we had recently been covering a current event known as the Tampa Affair, in which 438 rescued Afghan refugees were refused permission into Australian waters. The week before we had discussed the similarities to a boat of Jewish German refugees that faced a similar fate in the ’30’s.

When I came home my parents were watching the events of the day replayed again and again on the television. My dad had been on the phone earlier in the day when the man he was speaking with said “you watchin’ TV? The whole world’s gone to hell”. My dad, like I’m sure a lot of people, began taping the events. I assume it is more for record keeping and may be watched again when it is discovered far off in the future in the ruins of our empire, as I can hardly imagine a rainy Sunday when we will decide to just throw on the September 11, 2001 edition of “Good Morning, America”.

I discussed the day’s events with my dad as he drove to me to my job at Kroger’s grocery store. At work I was forced to constantly hear the speculations and opinions of every customer who thought we were all going to be dead by sunrise. We were just north of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base which everyone was sure to be the next target. Rumors were spreading that a plane had already crashed there. It’s weird how a major tragedy can make people so self-centered that they begin to view things from a sadomasochistic death drive.

It was an interesting time after 9/11 when most Americans had to do something they rarely do; view the news with a sense of history and an assumption that it is more complicated that it seems. I can recall people trying to figure out “if the Taliban are bad guys, are the Northern Alliance good guys?” and “what exactly is the difference between the Taliban and al-Qaeda?”

I remember being at a mall and seeing a booth where an Indian woman was selling t-shirts of a clip art drawing featuring a plane flying into an exploding building. While done with the best of intentions, the image of the plane made the shirt shockingly distasteful. At least she tried, I suppose. I’m sure no Ohioan ever sold charity Tsunami t-shirts at a mall in India.

Ever since I started seriously paying attention to world history around the 6th grade I had always been shocked that Pearl Harbor was the only instance of an attack or invasion on the United States in the last 100 years. I was constantly told of America’s force and that an attack was impossible. This all changed on 9/11. I felt weird knowing at 16 that I would never have that conversation about the vulnerability of safety inherit in a free republic again.

Al-Qaeda’s attack on America moved international politics from being a concept covered in the newspapers to something with very real consequences that affects innocent people all over the world. What is words on a page signed by a President or an order by a leader in a cave is a very real bullet to the chest of a solider or an explosion at a public marketplace. It is sad to me how embedded, for better but usually for worse, phases like “9/11” and “ground zero” became in the nine years since that day.

When the passenger of Flight 93 over Pennsylvania said “Let’s roll” he wasn’t thinking about winning elections or what the founding fathers would do or even how the story would read in the newspaper. He probably had no idea his actions would be known by anyone at all. He said “let’s roll” because he was holding true to his values and was ready to sacrifice his life to prevent the deaths of more innocent people. Putting people over politics, religion, and ideology should be what we learned in 9/11. Instead, after a few months of patriotism, all we have left now is more fuel for division and hatred and more imagery to encourage war and bigotry. September 11,2001 truly was a sad day.

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