It's not history to me

When I woke up this morning, I didn't feel any different. I didn't think, "wow, it's been 10 years since the world changed." And yet, of course, I did feel different then I did 10 years ago today.

I feel different everyday if you are looking at it from the context of history. I feel different today than 1 year ago. Than one month ago. Time changes people, it has to. But today itself is different because it is a big anniversary, which of course makes you reflect on the differences.

On 9/11/2001, I woke up with some type of ailment that sent me to the University Health Center. Since that's where I was when I found out, you'd think I would have taken the time to memorize the small fact of why I was at the doctor, but that's the thing about life changing events. You often don't know they will have a life before/after effect until many years later. I do know it was an ailment serious enough to make me miss my first class. Ok, that could have been a paper cut, cause really, who wants to go to a 7:30am teaching methods class... (see, I remember that part!)

I was sitting in the triage area, having my temperature taken and the nurse comes in and says, "did you hear an airplane accidentally flew in to one of the Trade Center Buildings in New York?" I said, "Whoops! Somebody's getting fired!" Yep. Actually said that. The day that changed America, "whoops, somebody's getting fired." Yikes. Not my finest hindsight moment.

The day unfolded from there with me going to class, only to discover no professor was having it. As a music major, most of my classes were in one central building and we all sat in the recital hall and watched the news on the projector. I do remember that one of my professors later in the morning came to get my classmates and said "watching it isn't going to solve it, let's have class." And we did. And it was weird. Later that afternoon I sought out my voice lesson teacher to cancel my lesson. She seemed relieved as well, since all anyone wanted to do at that point was pray or watch the news.

I was dating a guy name Joe at the time who was a freshman at USC at the time. I had called him in the morning to tell him to turn on the TV and he seemed oblivious to the importance of doing that. I will say that while I had no way of know the significance of that day, I did have the wherewithal to know that I needed to be informed. That this was going to be an event we would discuss until no one could watch the footage of the towers collapsing anymore, as we knew now that the collapse disintegrated many lives into a fine powder that covered us.

The other thing about this day that has become interesting to me as I've gotten older is that Fall 2001 is the only time I faithfully kept a journal in my whole life. I can tell you how it changed me, because I can see it on the page. Below are excerpts from 9/10, 9/11 and 9/12.

As I watch 9/11 anniversary coverage, I am once again hit by my initial thought, which is that this is not history to me. It HAPPENED to me. How can anything you personally expierence ever be that distant, bookish word called history. Ben will never know 9/11 for anything more than some documentaries and a chapter in his APUSH text. But I know, I remember. They say never forget, but how could I?