The Reality is More Terrifying than Fiction

Today is September 11^th and we had an assembly outside around the flag pole. Members of the police and fire departments in West Elkton were all in attendance. They had a guest speaker who was one of the kids parents, come in and talk about the mood and feeling on that day in 2001. The marching band came down from the high school and played the national anthem and we all sang together. Then after the moment of silence the new band director, whom I went to high school with, played taps on his trumpet. A lot of these kids weren’t even born yet, or they were just babies. They have no memory at all of that happening. I had a couple of kids after the ceremony ask me how old I was and where I was when Sept 11 happened. I was a sophomore in high school, barely 15 and it was terrifying. I told them I remember feeling scared because the only other time there had been an attack on US soil was Pearl Harbor, and we only learned about that in history class. So thinking something like that could happen now was really scary. During the ceremony there is one little boy, who is severely ADHD and is in the adapted art class for the special education kids, who kept moving and talking and being inadvertently disrespectful. He was standing close enough that I put my hands on his shoulders and whispered in his ear that this was a sad time and he needed to be quiet and respectful. I stood like that with him for the rest of the ceremony to try and still him. He acted better then. I know he is too young to understand the weight of it. It definitely put my own school experience in perspective and it also made me feel old. I understand how my mother must feel when she talks about things from her teenage years, like Vietnam ending, or the blizzard of '77.