9/11 is more than just a day on our calendar

If you ask almost anyone above the age of thirty where you were on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers fell, you can almost always expect a detailed response.  To my generation, however, the generation of teenagers under the age of 21, that question doesn’t apply.

I don’t know what it’s like to watch a beacon of American strength and security explode into a giant fireball, and moments later, collapse. I have never seen a New York City skyline above two majestic towers reduced to rumble. I don’t know a world before 9/11.

When the Twin Towers fell, the plume of jet-black smoke punctured the Manhattan skyline and, it is said, the spirit of every American. But that was back then.

Now, much like today’s headlines that we casually glance at and scroll through on our phones, the tragedy of 9/11 seems to fade into the background becoming just another part of our history that my generation was not alive to see. 

Every year on September 11, my family and I gather around the television to watch the memorial ceremony in Lower Manhattan.  While each victim’s name is called, each death hangs in the air, we stare at the screen in silence to give deference to those who lost their lives.  But mid-program — I’m ashamed to admit — I grow tired. Soon enough, the television dies down to background noise. Our family goes back to our everyday.

Growing up in a post-9/11 world, I have long accepted the immense changes that resulted from the attack.  The sight of the tumbling towers not only seared itself into  America’s conscious, but it also exposed a major breach in our security that seemed to forever change the way we respond to threats both from outside and within.

On a recent excursion to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I casually remarked to my Mom that perhaps the steps were too crowded with people and may be a prime target for a terrorist attack. 

I associate a trip to the airport with long lines of security and hauling up suitcases to be scanned through X-ray machines. 

At the entrance of Hershey Park this summer, my young brothers and I eagerly raced to the turnstile only to be halted by a mandatory baggage check. 

For many, these occasional protocols are seen as no more than minor inconveniences.  We hardly stop to connect them to the tragedy at their root. But we cannot forget the legacy that lives with us, no matter how painfully close or distant we may feel to that event.  We cannot let history be reduced to background noise. We cannot let the cries of the victims go unheard for my generation and those to come.