There was once a 13-year-old kid who had never heard of something called "the World Trade Center," and could not understand why one of the older students was crying inconsolably.
"A
plane flew into the World Trade Center!"
"...the whats?"
This kid's following thought was
How could you possibly not miss a building? You are flying a plane. The entire school, which had been hosted at a National Guard building, was sent home.
A combination of confused and redundant news reports and a lack of information regarding
what are the Twin Towers?? resulted in, perhaps unsurprisingly, near indifference.
How much should I care? This is bad, yeah, but what is all this? Should I care? What's even going on?
The following weeks and months and years were, to this particular 13-year-old, a mix of annoyance and a deep sadness and acknowledgement of what happened-- the sort of thing that sits in you, without adequate verbal expression, taking a little while to be a little better understood-- the understanding that something very big and very terrible had happened, but the only real impact it seemed to really have was inconvenience.
A particularly memorable memory was that, after 9/11/01, each school day for the next year began with an armed National Guardsman walking up and down the aisle of the school bus. Some other kids joked
"Maybe we should get towels and wrap them up like turbans on our heads, hahaha" and the 13-year-old we are concerned with was disgusted with the classmates' sarcasm.
Some things have changed, of course, but that's how it was. I certainly care more, and less because of the inconveniences.
You should listen to these--
some of the recordings from that day. They are, to me, more "catching" than the endless clips of buildings falling into themselves. You don't quite hear, but know, people walked out of this world and into the next. Frankly? That's still pretty weird for me.
