I hate September 11. Too many rotten memories.
Of course, I don’t have any “exciting” stories, if you could call them that; I was in the third grade and in Michigan when the attacks occurred. So realistically, the World Trade Center’s destruction did not impact me directly in any way, shape, or form.
So why do I hate it? A lot of selfish reasons, really. The most prominent reason is ironically the first reason I had. You see, my mother promised me at a young age, before I was 10, that one day she’d take me to New York City and show me the awesome view from the top of the towers. Back then, I thought that was going to be the best time of my life.
Understandably, when the towers came down, my first thought was, “So, how am I going to see the top of the tower? Wasn’t it a promise?” You can’t ask me, a child in the third grade, to come up with more emotion than that—especially because I had no idea the significance of what just happened.
I was only furious with those bad men who ruined that promise. How dare they take that potential event away from me! And since then, as I understood just how much devastation was caused, I resented it even more.
Now, I can’t go in a tall building without thinking about how to escape should a disaster happen. I can’t go on a plane without an air of distrust to my fellow flightmates. It makes me dread these unfair stigmas in my mind, and the minds of my fellow Americans who grew up with these same thoughts and fears.
But you know what else? I am pissed that it was “just another one of those things,” one of the things that happened, and there was nothing I, or almost anybody for that matter, could do about it.
So I get a little pissed off that they flew a plane into the towers 14 years ago. So what? What does this anger do? Nothing. What does the sadness and remorse for however many thousand people died do? Also nothing. How helpless and hopeless feeling anything for the past is. The best we can do is to “learn” from it, but let’s be honest with ourselves: unless you are sharing a plane with a terrorist, there is nothing you can do the next time something like this happens.
You see why I am angry now? Pointless. As angry and furious as I am about this event in history, absolutely nothing changes the past nor has any meaningful impact on the future. And the same goes for anyone else. The whole event weighs heavily on my heart, but in the end that doesn’t make a difference.
Odds are, the same exact principle applies to my current standing at Stevens. As pissed off as I get about a variety of activities, all I’ll probably ever be is some pedestrian, angry at forces beyond my influence and control. How infuriating. What is more infuriating is that this will likely hold true for many things beyond college, too: war, environmental disaster, economic collapse, Donald Trump being an idiot (don’t vote for him, please). Man, this column got depressing quick.
Well, I suppose the only thing to do is to make the most of the situation. I did end up going to the top of the World Trade Center. Maybe next time my mother can come with me and we can finally get that promise out of the way.
