There is a generation, I want to say everyone between ages 15 and 30, that grew up with 9/11. In the sense that some were living their teen years when the planes hit and others were newborns. I myself was just 1 and I don’t remember that, but by the time I was 5 I knew what had happened and was desperate to know why it had happened. I spent September 11th, 2007 reading the old newspaper clippings my parents had kept and watching the news. I wanted to know.
In middle and high school, every year that 9/11 fell on a school day we would talk about it in class, how it affected us, and how we should remember that day. I’ve heard stories from so many friends and at least four teachers, but one struck me the hardest. In my school, there are quite a few young teachers below the age of thirty who were teenagers or maybe younger when the planes hit. This teacher told us that she’d been at school when the world literally stopped. Her teachers turned on radios and TV’s and all eyes turned to New York, DC, and Pennsylvania. For months after that, she said, every time a plane flew overhead when they were outside, they would stop and watch it, ready to run at any moment. There were kids who were afraid of planes. Afraid that they might be carrying terrorists. There is a generation who grew up like that.
There is also a generation, which I would consider mine, that doesn’t remember that day, but remembers every single year that thousands of people died and their parents remember the exact thing they were doing when it happened.
September 11th changed a whole generation of people. A whole generation that grew up in the ever changing world we’re in today. A whole generation who won’t forget 9/11. A whole generation who will tell their kids about it and tell those kids that they were living the day it happened and that it affected them in a way that’s unexplainable.
The millennials will never forget nine eleven. Even if we forget everything else, it’s one thing we won’t forget. It’s one thing we won’t fail to give a moment of silence for. It’ll be in the back of our minds until the day we die and that won’t ever change.
Thank you to all the service men, women, and dogs that helped save people and may the people whose lives were lost rest in peace knowing that we won’t forget them.
