Thread by @CherryGryffon

My fellow Americans:

You know the day. You know the mood. If you were alive then, I hope you spend today appreciating that you're still alive today.

I'll never forget that I was 11, experiencing my first taste of 6th grade, sitting in Math class, with PEMDAS on the board.

The tiny tube television was hanging in the corner by the whiteboard, all blue skies, and a grey ocean of dust, smoke, and building debris. The teacher sat there on her desk, hand over her mouth, while us kids sat quietly, having ceased our goofing off and just stared with her.

Those of us that were fooling around, and laughing and joking moments before, now hugged each other and didn't even dare to whisper.

The entire school was utterly silent, not a single voice was used.

The only sounds that could be heard were the birds outside, on the otherwise beautiful crisp fall day, and the hum of the electronics and heating in the school.

To be 11 years old, some of us only 10, and live that?

& you wonder why we are the way we are.

Before some of us even had hit puberty, we stood and watched everything our schooling taught us, be dismissed in two precise strokes. "The greatest country in the world" "The world's superpower" "The country that leads all the others" "Untouchable, no foreign wars on our soil"

All the teachings we had been taught to that point, were wiped off the board as easily as PEMDAS was that day.

We began to question EVERYTHING.

We had to. We had to believe what we saw, and what we saw negated what we were taught. So, we questioned things.

We no longer were a new generation that would just believe what they were told. We no longer were a generation that would blindly follow a faith, or a country, without questioning its position and influence on the world.

We couldn't afford to. BC that's how today happened.

We grew up an anxious, self-sustaining, globally-oriented, stability-craving generation that couldn't afford to become complacent.

Without our consent, at 11 years old, we were forced to start thinking politically. About the consequences of political actions on the world.

I'm not saying good change didn't happen to us either.

We're a generation more likely to help others, without thinking of their wealth, or status. Simply because "We know what it's like".

We're more likely to sacrifice our own goods and needs, for those that have less.

We know what it's like to watch your world get ripped out from under you, and be left to flounder in your own questions, and mental gymnastics.

Leaving school early that day, watching parents screech their tires and come running across the middle school grounds to kids-

and to see many of them falling over from the crushing pressure of the hug from their parents.

Adults were crying in pain, children were crying in confusion, and all were wide-eyed in fear, unsure of what was going to happen.

9/11 made our generation what it is. Never Forget.