The Storytelling of September 11, 2001

With the 20th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks upon us, I’m sure many people are here online to post their thoughts. Maybe they’re talking about the day itself. Maybe they’re talking about the wars that followed. Maybe they’re talking about the state Afghanistan is in right now. Maybe they’re posting 9/11 memes. As for my own thoughts, I want to make sure that we never lose sight of a basic truth behind the terrorist attacks we witnessed that day: Those attacks were a tragedy that killed many people and scared even more.

 

You may be telling yourself, “Duh, everybody knows that lots of people were killed that day!” And I would say you’re right. However, many of us jump immediately to the aftermath of the terrorist attacks by reflecting on how the world’s political landscape transformed. That’s an important topic, to be sure, but we should never lose sight of the lives lost in those initial attacks. Nearly 3,000 people died that day, coming to an untimely end that they never would have predicted that morning. If, like me, you can remember that Tuesday, you can no doubt remember the initial shock of learning about those terrorist attacks. But the friends and family of those who died had to endure not only that painful shock but also the grief of losing someone they cared about. Many first responders would end up losing their lives as well.

 

As for me, here’s how I remember the day, back when I was an eleven-year-old sixth grader who had never heard of terrorism before. During math class, my first class of the morning, a lady announced over the PA system, “Don’t worry, everything’s fine. We’re just locking our doors.” That made us chuckle. What was up with that random announcement? As for the rest of the school day, it was a great one for me because, for once, the teachers barely gave us any homework at all.

 

But once I got home, my mom, trying to be as gentle as possible, informed me that the country is “kind of crazy right now” because some people crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. My initial response was to wonder if it was an accident, but she told me that it definitely wasn’t, and I learned what terrorism was for the first time.

 

I then stayed glued to the television screen for about an hour, watching the replaying footage of the towers falling as people ran for safety. Some couldn’t run, instead jumping out of the collapsing towers in a desperate attempt to escape. Even people far from the buildings were scared, not sure what was to come. Eventually, I learned about one other plane that terrorists had hijacked as well, but its brave passengers managed to stop them from reaching their target.

 

At school the next day, the terrorist attacks were all we talked about. We eleven-year-olds probably didn’t know a thing about international politics until that day, but there we were, discussing pieces of information we’d picked up on from the news and from our parents. The class clown was upset that nobody wanted to talk about anything fun, but unfortunately for him, I don’t think he found another person in the mood to talk about something else. The teachers guided us through the morning by telling us to write down everything we were feeling, and we talked about it as a class.

 

During the children’s service at my church the following Sunday, I got to see how people even younger than I was were responding to the news. One girl burst into tears the very moment an adult mentioned the attacks. Meanwhile, during one activity where we could play with clay, one smiling boy proudly held up his replica of an airplane crashing into a tower. “That’s not funny,” another boy near him declared. I agreed wholeheartedly.

 

But I have to admit that, after a week or so, I started to feel numb to the news. Life was going on—at least for us. Soon, many people started weaving the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks into stories, stories that are still being told today. That’s only natural since stories are how we make sense of reality.

 

Early on, the most widely-told story was that 9/11 was a day in which Americans were unified, brave, and strong even in the midst of adversity. Commercials advertised commemorative coins that were red, white, and blue in honor of how patriotic we were to stand strong. “God bless the USA,” another brief commercial would declare as noble music played in the background.

 

Humans are natural-born storytellers, and many of us wanted to feel strong after those devastating attacks, so I could see where these commercials were coming from. However, even as an eleven-year-old who only watched TV for the cartoons, I was kind of disturbed by how everybody was talking about being brave and such when that didn’t change how thousands of people had died in a tragedy. Did we feel unified that day? Of course! But that silver lining isn’t the whole story.

 

And that’s something I think we need to remember today. Twenty years later, all sorts of people have woven the 9/11 attacks into different stories, especially for political purposes. Given the state Afghanistan is in right now, I’m sure many people are talking about the repercussions of how the United States responded to the attacks. I’m also sure that, in history textbooks now and those to come, the attacks themselves only make up a few sentences, whereas the wars and such to follow have paragraphs or even pages dedicated to them.

 

Obviously, what happened after 9/11 is significant. I don’t deny that for a second. However, if you’re old enough to remember how you felt that day, I believe you have the duty to pass on to the next generation what, exactly, it was like when you first heard that terrorists successfully infiltrated the United States and killed thousands of innocent people. The next generation needs to know about these attacks as more than just a few sentences in a textbook, as more than a political narrative, as more than a bunch of Internet memes. Out of respect for those who died that day and in the years to come, as well as for those first responders and other heroes, they need to hear what it was truly like in a personal way.

 

And, of course, if you weren’t around back then, try asking people who remember that day what it was like. I can assure you that they’ll have a story to tell.