FWIS3

...to have forgotten.

It totally escaped my attention, until this mid-morning, that today is 9/11.

Saw a photo of the Obamas and Bidens with hands over hearts, on the WH lawn. Caption.

Oh yeah!

Actually I'm sort of glad NOT to have recalled (no offense intended to victims, survivors, and their families).

12 years is long enough that I'm not certain the students in my class who I was TAing remembered it. Late teens now so they would've been what, first graders? A large fraction probably do remember it, but didn't get what was going on at the time.

Time really is a funny thing. I remember at the 10 year anniversary thinking "wow, has it really been 10 years?!" but now I can believe it's been a dozen. And what seemed like a thing I'd never consider normal now is just another bit of history I lived through- probably the most important thing that'll happen around here this 9/11 is not the anniversary so much as Netflix has finally started up in the Netherlands.

I still get a little shiver looking at the date though.

Rommie wrote:12 years is long enough that I'm not certain the students in my class who I was TAing remembered it. Late teens now so they would've been what, first graders? A large fraction probably do remember it, but didn't get what was going on at the time.

Time really is a funny thing. I remember at the 10 year anniversary thinking "wow, has it really been 10 years?!" but now I can believe it's been a dozen. And what seemed like a thing I'd never consider normal now is just another bit of history I lived through- probably the most important thing that'll happen around here this 9/11 is not the anniversary so much as Netflix has finally started up in the Netherlands.

I still get a little shiver looking at the date though.

I heard a statistic recently that for a quarter of the population, it is a page in a history book and not an event they lived through. 12 years ago+ 4-5 years before you start having concrete memories attached to significant events outside your family/community = 17 year olds. I know for me, I was about 7 or 8 when I started making such memories. When I was 8 it was the Tigers winning the World Series. I can't come up with anything earlier than that other than personal events.

I'm not 100% sure I'm not mixing statistics, but it makes sense that a quarter of the population would be under 18. Right?

I knew the date, especially after the story breaking yesterday about the special rates a golf course, in Ohio (IIRC) was offering today. Bad PR.

The tenth anniversary, fine. Last year the usual rememberances, but Benghazi overshadowed it. For me usually when 9-11 roles around, I still get shivers from the memories of watching those that chose to jump, from the burning towers. On the date itself, put the tv on, just before the second plane hit. IIRC, it was CNN, Aaron Brown on a rooftop, in the background the plane comes screaming across behind him, slams into the tower and the blowout of glass on the farside. Hairs standing up on end once again, as I type this.

Like I've stated earlier, my earliest memory is watching the '72 Summit Series at school. Students/staff were in either in one of the two gyms or the library watching games 5, 7 and 8 on tv, Sept. 22, 26th and 28th, 1972, being played in Moscow. Wish I could say I remember watching the Leafs winning the Cup in '67 or the Moon landing in July '69, but just a bit too young at the time of those events, to remember them. Interestingly, I remember watching the hockey games, but not much of Munich '72 which happened the same month.