9-11

It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years to the day that the Twin Towers and World Trade Center were attacked.  I was only 8 back then, almost 9.  These days, the whole attack has a lot more significance to me.  I remember as a kid hearing that the towers were attacked, I didn't understand what was going on at all.  All I knew was that my mom tried waking me up to tell me this, and I think that I came into the room where she was watching everything on TV, but I really don't remember.  All I know is that my life didn't seem to have any immediate effects from the whole thing.  I went about my little existence as I usually did: playing, doing school work and getting into trouble.

When I got a little older, possibly a few years or so, I started understanding just what happened on September 11, 2001.  Traveling by plane no longer was a simple feat.  Being a military family, we moved in 2003 to Hawaii after having been in California for a mere 3 years.  Airport security was tight, and traveling home to Idaho was quite the excursion every year with all of the scanning and processing and whatnot we all had to go through.

I saw the attacks as a sad day for America, and I realized that a war had begun, regardless of what others were calling it.  At one point I became very interested in the whole thing and began actually looking into what others were saying about what had happened so long ago.  I believe this happened after I became a teenager and had moved yet again to finally end up where I am now.  I was in high school at the time, probably a sophomore or junior.  Everything finally made sense to me, I saw Clinton's mistakes which led to the attacks, and I saw the controversy of the war.  I saw just how angry so many people had become, as well as how relaxed they were in their little lifestyles.  It amazes me just how stupid Americans are these days (no offense, but we are).

This day 10 years ago changed our lives dramatically, whether we see it now or not.  I look back and wonder how different I might have felt if I had been my current age when the attacks aired that morning.  What would I have done then?

Looking forward from this 10-year anniversary of such a tragic day for America, I really don't know what to expect from our nation 5 or even 2 years from now.  My beliefs about America aren't exactly optimistic, but I hope continually that somehow, someway, America will become a better, more responsible nation than it has been in the past 10 years.