A week ago I was playing my violin. When I had finished and put away my instrument, I walked into the living room and found my parents both watching a television program pasted together from bits of handheld camera footage of the September 11 attacks. I felt strongly compelled to sit down and watch with them, and as I did so I was impressed with the unfortunate irony of my abridged perceptions of that day.
On September 11, 2001, I was being driven to a violin lesson when my mother told me about the attacks. I just remember thinking, this is a lot bigger than I think it is. I knew then that I didn't understand. They had happened while I was at school, and no one had told me or my classmates. I did not see the news reports or watch with the rest of the country as the second tower was hit. All the adults around me hid their reactions. I did not know that three thousand people were dying, and that thousands more were being choked by smoke and debris as their lives were changed forever. I saw all of that, the real people and their responses, for the first time eight years after the fact. I realized that the desire to protect me had backfired.
I was nine years old and at a complete loss; nothing I had experienced had prepared me to judge anything of that magnitude and complexity. Because I didn't see adult reactions to the attacks, I didn't know how to react. Because I didn't see the attacks themselves, they had always seemed somewhat remote to me, like something from a history book. By most adults I was shielded from all but the shallowest implications and displays of paper patriotism, and I took the attacks only as seriously as they were presented to me. For some time I regarded them with a degree of cynicism, of which I slowly came to be ashamed as years passed. Now that attitude seems disgusting and alien to me, but I have no individual to blame but myself. I was nine years old, and people had to deal with my reactions as well as their own. I' m just glad that I have come around to some sort of understanding, broken as it is, after eight year
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This is a very interesting post. I agree that when we were young, this did not seem to be as huge of a deal. I still regard it as a big deal and very tragic, but I think if it happened now we would consider it to be more so. This reminds me of the Susan Sontag article we read over the summer but it comes from a child's point of view and is more accessible.
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