We Will Never Forget

“Happy National Emergency Day, everybody!”

I was a junior in high school when my photography teacher opened up the day with this remark to a sleepy class of 16 and 17 year olds. “September 11th? 9-1-1? Get it? No? Never mind. Get to work.” After only a few weeks into the school year, we had already become numb to his eccentricities. We shuffled to the huge dark room to work on artistically expressing ourselves through black and white images. A little bit before 8:00AM one of the few kids with their own cell phone got a text that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center in NYC. Two thoughts popped into my head: “which one is the World Trade Center again?” and an image of a small prop plane helplessly smashing into a rigid building.

By the time first period was over at 8:19AM, 22 minutes had passed since the second plane hit the South Tower. I walked out of the classroom into a hallway abuzz with words like “attack” “terrorist,” and “holy fucking shit.” Second period calculus was a blur as news came in that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, another plane crashed somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, and the buildings were starting to fall. It had become clear that this was a calculated strike. On the classroom’s TV in third period psych, I watched in horror as the North Tower gracefully fell at 9:28AM leaving nothing but open sky. Mr. Galovich had never heard his class so silent.

Fear was fully in force and panic was starting to settle in. Principal Leonard was considering sending kids home. “What if Chicago is next? These kids will want to be with their parents.” To maintain order, a decision was made to keep school going. Most teachers just suspended class and allowed us to watch the news in the classrooms. Large screens and projectors were set up in the cafeteria during the lunch periods. This granted us some sense of control—if we could watch the events and react together to what we were witnessing, perhaps we wouldn’t feel so caged. My English teacher was the only one who kept business as usual. “You’ll have plenty of time to watch TV tonight.” I hated him. I couldn’t analyze Ethan Frome at a time like this. History was happening! Years later I realized that he was just as scared as we were and dealing with it in his own way.

Shocked. Dazed. Stunned. Horrified. These words aren’t enough to describe the exact feeling of that day, but by the time I went to bed I just felt numb. And as new information, images, and videos came out in the days, weeks, and months following that idle Tuesday, my numbness never went away. I heard stories of people jumping from the top floors instead of burning to death. Of firefighters blindly running up the stairs against panicked hordes of people. Of loving calls and texts amidst imminent death. Even of the devil’s face appearing in the bellowing smoke. I was watching a horror movie that was not only based on actual events but happening in real time.

Flash forward almost ten years. I know all about Afghanistan, Iraq, WMDs, the “surge,” al-Queda, the Taliban, shoe bombers, and underwear bombers. I no longer have 8 periods of classes or worry about swim practice. I work 9-12 hours a day and discuss cash flows. I work on the 56th floor in downtown Chicago and get butterflies when I see a low flying plane circling the city to land at O’Hare. And now I’m about to go to bed after watching the movie Moon with Tegan. But before I plug my phone in, I see a text from my friend Andy. “Turn on CNN.” Within a few minutes we watch President Obama explain that Osama bin Laden has been killed. “Justice has been done.”

Over the ensuing days, many questions have been squawked about on the national news. What was the proper way to celebrate? Are the grisly pictures going to be released? What will this do to the President’s polling numbers? How many people have made the Obama/Osama mistake? What does this mean about our relationship with Pakistan? Should we leave Afghanistan? The discussion reminds me of all the questions that were raised beginning September 12th, once we shed our wordless disbelief. Hearing Osama’s name over and over has had an odd nostalgic ring to it. Through it all, one thing is certain, however: our war with terrorism is not over. But my numbness from that horrific day settles just a bit because I know that, at the very least, many of the friends and family of loved ones lost to Osama bin Laden went to bed on May 2nd, 2011 with a sense of closure.

George Carlin once had a comic bit that amounted to, “no one gives a shit where you were when JFK was shot.” He was making fun of people who give themselves a false sense of importance by connecting themselves to monumental events. Despite my being a huge fan, I have to disagree with Mr. Carlin on this one. We only see through our own eyes, and memories are stronger and more vivid when framed by our personal experiences. September 11th, 2001 was supposed to be just another random Tuesday. It wasn’t. Now, I’ll never forget “National Emergency Day!” or Ethan Frome or the projectors in the cafeteria. And no one will ever forget what menial task they were doing before the first plane hit or how they reacted to it. Because of these grounded memories, we will never forget those who were lost that day and what it did to us as a country, even after our most skilled fighters took out the madman who made it happen.

No. We will never forget.