Probably everyone now remembers where they were on September 11, 2001, just like we Boomers remember finding out about JFK's assassination.
I've always thought it was funny, though, that I don't have that kind of memory. Every morning before school I always watched the "Today" show while getting dressed. This one day, September 11th, for some reason, I didn't turn on the TV before I left for school at 6:30. I do remember listening to the radio on my drive to school. And the deejay said something about "all the airports are being closed."
Scary, but not very real-sounding.
Then, when I got to school, I was at a small satellite campus all day with NO TV's! So none of us knew anything all day. When I finally got home around 5, I was pretty shocked, seeing the Towers collapsing on tape all the rest of the evening.
The rest of the week we still had no TV's at school, so we shared newspaper stories with the students, and tried to reassure them. Were there more attacks coming? Were we at war, like World War II, my Mom's war experience?
The most memorable thing to me about that time was the lack of air traffic. Around LA, there's a lot of it-- I'm on the flight path to LAX and Long Beach airport, and there are plenty of helicopters buzzing nearby, too. But it seemed too eerily quiet in the skies.
The other thing I remember about September 11 is another non-memory. A year later, I decided to take my daughter to Ireland by way of New York. I thought it would be historical to see the Ground Zero site when we passed through New York for a few days.
The weird thing is that I never went to see Ground Zero. I felt too shy or voyeuristic or something, so I never did see it. I didn't want to ask anybody where it was.
Now I kick myself for not going, because I really think it would've been a unique memory. Why didn't I go and look? Don't know. Denying it?
