Those that never knew

"Where were you on 9/11?" Everyone asks that. They say you'll always remember. I was in middle school. Yeah, middle school. It seems strange to me. How can such a strong memory of such a notorious day come from the same years that have been termed the most awkward and immature time in anyone's life? But, just as everyone has that strong memory, I have mine, from the awkward halls of your typical middle school.


I won't bore you with too many specifics; you can imagine how it went: kid in school, finds out what happens, don't know what to do with it, teachers don't know what to do with it or us, so we all proceed to deal with various strange, spur of the moment, emotional, and sometimes inappropriate ways until we get home and start all over again with our families. 

I found out as a burnt out and, especially that morning, frustrated homeroom teacher yelled at us to be quiet because "somebody died". She turned around to yell at us again, after flipping channels to find the one she was told to change to, and was shortly greeted with a silence that she rarely received from that class. I'll never forget the look on her face as she turned back to face the TV at witch we all stared. We had just finished processing that the smoking building on the screen was in fact in our country, not a movie, on a live news channel, and, taking all these things into account, actually happening when the news camera we were watching caught the second plane crashing into tower 2.


I remember thinking, oddly enough, not in the emotional, often teary manner I am prone to, about the events of the day. Sure, I felt for those missing family members and friends, I was deeply saddened by what had happened, and I, with as much attention a pre-teen could muster, feared for where our country would head from this day. I was and still am, thinking back, surprised by what I ended up thinking about days later. The people that lost their lives that day; the victims whose lives were taken, the rescue workers who gave theirs in attempts to save others, never got an explanation. We speculated that day, we talked about what may have gone on, who may have done it, but we didn't really know; and that was us on the calm and not disastrous side of the television. The people that day...they never knew. No one told them why they had to die. They never heard the explanations, the long drawn out reasoning, or even the conspiracy theories! That bothered me.


Among the many many hundreds of things that were so wrong about that day, this seems like it might just need to be included. I don't know where, if anywhere, I'm going with this...it's just a thought. A thought that little, awkward, excessive amounts of hairspray using, middle school me had...and one that I couldn't quite ignore yesterday either.


For those that served and continue to today, I am thankful. For those that lost and are still, I'm sure, hurting today, I pray. And for those that never knew why this had to happen, I'll always remember.