I remember my high school history teacher talking about significant moments in history like the Kennedy assassination, and how if you were alive when those events occurred, then you will always remember where you were and what you were doing in those moments.
I never grasped the truth of that statement until September 11th 2001. It was my first semester of college and I was on my way back from my math class. As I walked down the long hallway towards my dorm room, someone yelled out "Holy shit they hit the other tower." I remember picking up the pace as I approached my room at the end of the hall. As was normal in a college dormitory, most of the doors were open and as I passed my dorm mates rooms I could see everyone was watching different news broadcasts.
I got to my room to find my roommate and girlfriend staring blankly at the TV screen. I asked what was going on and they said that "planes crashed into the world trade center." I remember seeing the image and thinking how I had only seen something like this in the movies. You never see things like this happen, you just see the aftermath. I felt sick to my stomach. At the time, all the details were sketchy. Once it was made public knowledge that we were attacked by a foreign power, an image of an old teacher of mine who had served in World War 2 flew through my head. He said that the day after the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor that he and some friends went out and joined the military. I couldn't help but wonder if that was what I was supposed to do; or if that was what a lot of people were going to do.
It's has been roughly a decade since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The United States has just announced that On May 1st 2011, Osama Bin Laden, the leader of the group responsible for the attacks has been killed by American forces. This is another moment in time that I will not forget. No, it doesn't mean that we've "defeated terror" and it's not as significant as it would have been if it had happened closer to the initial attacks, but it's still an important moment that I won't forget.
It's interesting to me that this signifies a moment in time that is forever encapsulated in your mind. September 11th is highly understandable, it was a surprise, if anything, and a horrible breaking point of the horrors to come. For me, I don't know if it is something entirely distraught and dragged out by the anti-climactic nature of the past ten years, but for me, it has become more of a comma in the sentence of our Middle Eastern actions. This event sticks with me no stronger than any of the other ones along the way, but the thing I think I will remember is the incessant chanting our fellow Americans shared in light of the news; the death of a human being, celebrated in a fashion all too reminiscent of the celebrations partook in the Middle East over the loss of many of our own innocents on September 11th. If anything, it all makes me weep for humanity that through it all, we can still find it within ourselves to celebrate death.
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