Deep Inside My Thoughts

When I’m at work, I’ve gotten in the habbit of listening to NPR while I drive. I always catch All Thing’s Considered from 5-630pm daily.Today, the program kind of hit me hard. I knew from watching CNN earlier today, that 9/11 tapes were released. CNN didnt play the audio, merelyposted transcripts. All Things Considered actually played the tapes, and it was very emotionally listening to them. One was of a firefighter trapped under a vehicle, and another was of a civillian burried inside a fire truck at ground zero. And, for some reason, it really hit me hard.

I remember 9/11. I was sleeping in Math class when the planes hit. I remember my teacher, Mr. Litton, waking me up, telling me this was history to be made. I remember watching the 2nd plane impact the World Trade Centers, and spending most of the school day glued to a TV. I’m a news junkie afterall, but, it never felt personal.

I never really was scared. I never felt any connection to 9/11 or anything. I remember panic breaking out here, runs on food and for the gas pumps. I never did any of that. I went to work, listened to co-workers claim there was a State of Emergency and the governor was closing all gas stations down, and everything else imagineable. Life went on as it always had for me.

Even all these years later, with Afghanistan, and Iraq, I never really thought too much about the suffering, an attack on US soil, it never was quite at the forefront of my thoughts. As an American, I should have been outraged. I wasn’t though, I was mad, but not the white hot fury everyone else seemed to have. I had a cooler head, and pretty much felt unconnected to everything the weeks after that. It’s funny how the world changing events seem so small at the time.

I suppose 2,000 dead in one attack seems very, well, statistical. Stalin said, “One man’s death is a tragedy, A thousand death is a statistic”. Thats very true. We can all weep over the death of a loved one, but when thousands else die, that small ball of anger in your stomach doesn’t get that big. I can be angry for the loss of a father or a brother, but how can I be angry for everyone’s brother.

But today, when I heard those tapes, it made me think. It was very chilling listening to living history, and thinking it was too callous to care about years ago. I wasn’t the person I am right now, back then. That’s all I can say about my thinking process. I was political back then, sure, but was like politically ADD. In the past few years, I’ve started to care a lot about my life. I joined the ACLU, have become a extreme Democrat, and I’m back in college.

Do these excuse my past thinking?