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 �what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux "i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes note random entry image credit design by : ilazarn ikmal powered by : diaryland |
what does it mean?
2011-09-11 @ 10:14 a.m.
i woke up this morning to see a million trite, cliched fucking posts about 9/11 on facebook. it really put me in a mood. when i was teaching, on september 11th i would ask the kids what 9/11 meant to them as a journal prompt. as the years went on, they knew less and less about it. they were so young when it happened. the last year i did it, i had all freshman kids in my class and many of them said that it meant nothing to them. it was just a date. i asked if they remembered anything else about it and a few kids who had relocated from north jersey or wherever remembered the fear, but other than those kids, most of them just said that it was a day that they knew they wouldn't have to do anything in school because everyone was doing 9/11 stuff. so these same kids, the ones i added on facebook after getting laid off, are posting these statuses and liking these 9/11 pages and i just want to call them out because i know they're just doing it because it's a click of a mouse. a press of a button. nothing they actually have to do or feel or care about after this moment. want to know where i was 9/11/01? it was my second week of college, and i was running late into a class and i saw everyone crowded around the tv in the lounge. i didn't pay any attention to it until i made it to class and was told everything was cancelled and that everyone needed to go home immediately. on my way back out, i didn't stop at the lounge, i just ran to my car and started racing home. the roads were a ghost town. totally deserted. my usual 90 minute drive was only about 45. i listened to new jersey radio on the way home and heard what had happened, but i didn't fully understand because THEY didn't understand. some of it was live, some was pre-recorded, because the DJs were still trying to put together the information. i arrived home and my mom told me what was happening, but i didn't watch it on tv. i tried to call my dad because he had made frequent trips to the world trade center for work, and was currently stationed in the pentagon. all cell phones were out. it was just fear. a sinking feeling. devastating sadness. today, after reading those stupid posts on facebook by people who couldn't give a shit about it, i finally turned on the tv to one of the million channels showing the footage from that day. i made it about 10 minutes and started to cry. i know it's so that people don't forget. i know it's history. i know all that. but there's something about watching those planes hit. don't people realize that people were dying? you're watching footage of people's lives ending. as educational as it may be, i just can't bring myself to view it, and i probably never will. my dad is fine. he was fine. but he was in pentagon city that day. he had switched offices with someone who was in a satellite building off of the main pentagon. the guy he switched with was killed that day. when we went there, he took us to the memorial. when we went there, it was 2003, and there were grown men inside the room, holding each other and crying. i've never seen anything so sad in my life. that's what 9/11 is to me. not liking some stupid page to 911,911 likes. not saying, "never forget!" as if anyone possibly could. it's the lingering question in my heart that makes me wonder if those people i saw in the lounge at school that day were watching members of their families die. i can't imagine. i can't. |