Nostalgia: How Did September 11 Affect Me?

On September 11th, I woke up the same as any other day. I jumped in my car, a blue geo prism that'd seen better days, and drove to school.

I was 19 years old. 

The class I was attending was an early morning (for college) lab. I had to take a course that was called something like Electrical and Computer Engineering. It was for my CS degree at GMU. The lab is where we poked around with wires and simple processors to learn how to make simple logic circuits to model logic problems.

But I digress.

I had a radio in the car, but I don't recall hearing anything suspicious on the way to class. I parked in a commuter lot and started the long walk to class.

It was a quiet morning, but I didn't notice anything awry. Colleges aren't typically full of morning people in my experience.

When I got to the lab, it was empty save one other person. The teacher's aide looked up at me and said, "Class is cancelled." He may have said something more, but I don't recall. I remember the tables, the stools, and the empty lab and a growing sense of "something's weird."

I drove home.

My next strong memory is walking in the front door to my parent's house. Nana was in the office. The news was on.

That's when I saw the planes.

The footage played over and over and over.

Living so close to the Pentagon, we knew many people who were effected. It felt like there was an oppressive pall draped over the area.

Soon, I remember the pride and outrage. Bill and Dan's dad showed us a joke I remember to this day: It involved rebuilding the two towers in the shape of an upraised middle finger. Then there was another joke about the future, a time around today, when a father tells his son about September 11th and the boy looks up and asks "What's a terrorist?"

I could go on. I remember the initial invasion of Iraq. The internet was alight with humorous pictures of their minister of propaganda saying "What invasion? There's no invasion!" as he dodged tanks or his camel exploded.

September 11th was a day that felt hyper real and burned an image of itself into my head.

It certainly was a day that changed things. 

I remember watching the beginning of Patriot Games on TV in sixth grade. A terrorist to me was a sniper or a bomber in the Irish Republican Army. The Middle East wasn't really on my threat radar. 

I remember people tying yellow ribbons around trees in Beaumont during the Gulf War, but there was never a sense of threat. 

September 11th galvanized me to start reading the news. I pretty much ignored it before. I figured all the TV news channels were sensationalists who hyped up negative stories and replayed the them over and over for ratings. 

Actually, I still think they do too much of that. I found I could control more of the content by reading online.

It seems like a small change, but it's one that's persisted. I boot up and load a news website to scan headlines at the start of any work day. It's not that I expect to find a disaster, but I want to be aware if there is something going on I should be aware of.

"You don't forget where you were on September 11th," I was told.

It's certainly true for me.

Today? Not so much.