People old enough to remember the September 11 attacks, what was the day like?

It really is weird. I remember where I was - in my college dorm, sleeping lazily in the cool air that had recently arrived to break up the brutal Texas heat. My mother called me and asked if I was ok. I couldn't figure out why she'd call me with such urgency when we were a few thousand miles apart. I went to a TV with my classmates, it was unreal. It was if you suddenly realized you were in a Die Hard movie.

Once that second plane hit, reality was never the same again. It felt like I'd fallen through a tinted mirror into a reality that was the almost the same as my own, just everything was darker. Optimism about the future was a shade darker, optimism about my country was a shade darker, trust in others outside the US was a shade darker, on and on like that. I still wonder from time to time what it would be like to live in that brighter original reality.

It doesn't seem like that long ago. I can remember it like it happened just a year or two ago. That's what it feels like. The anger over it still feels just as strong.

The idea that someone could be born between then and now, and grow up not having experienced something that fundamentally altered my view of the world, and altered the view of every single person I knew?

It feels crazy, like you're a contestant on a hidden camera show and someone asks you something entirely nonsensical with an air of utter seriousness.

Just getting old I guess. Happens to us all. Most of us, anyway.

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