As I was driving home tonight, listening to NPR, a piece came on about the 9/11 Commission. I don't even remember what they were talking about. Some documents going missing and Clinton (because you know it's only a matter of time before this whole thing blows up in the Shrub's face and he turns it all around and blames Clinton for it) are floating around in the back of my head, but it was the whole 9/11 thing that got me irritated. Again. So I stopped listening.
I have issues with 9/11. More specifically, I have issues with the fact that "that day" is referred to as simply 9/11. Are we so lazy that no one can be bothered with saying September?
By chance, Steve happened to pop over this evening and I brought this up to him and the old man. To say I was mocked would be an understatement. And they used my issue as a jumping off point to completely hijack the conversation and bend it to their will. I'll just say that Black September and 7/11's were involved.
Steve finally got around to asking why it bothers me. And to be quite honest, I'm not sure I really know, beyond the fact that I feel that just saying 9 minimizes things.
He asked me if I say September 11, 2001, and then the whole thing digressed even further to a discussion on how I say 2001: two thousand and one? two thousand one? twenty ought one? blah blah blah.
So...I left the room. Because, yeah, I'm a grown up.
But it bothers me. I know that. I mean it really, really bothers me.
Posted by beth at July 19, 2004 06:36 PMWhat bothers me (I know...you didn't ask... but I feel like sharing) is the fact that the world seems fixated on that day, to the exclusion of the problem of which the day is only a symptom.
It would be roughly analogous of someone with HIV fixating on the fever spike he got shortly after contracting the virus. He isn't thinking about how or where he caught it... and he isn't doing anything to pursue treatment or lobby the government to make finding a cure a priority.
No... there he sits scratching his head over that damned fever spike.
September 11th, 2001 (or however you say it) was a symptom of a serious sickness that the world caught a long time before that date. By fixating on that date, too many people are ignoring the source of the sickness... and losing focus and will to fight this global virus.
9/11 was a horrible day because of its scale (maybe the abreviation is our way of making it mentally manageable)... but it was not unique in any other way. It was a terrorist attack... one of many... and perhaps one of an infinite number of future attacks if we don't snap ourselves out of this fixation with that one single date.
Posted by: David at July 20, 2004 01:58 AMNo David, I did not ask anyone else's opinion, but I am very glad you shared yours, because I do wonder if I'm in a vacuum here.
I agree with you in some respects. Every other country on the planet (just about) has endured terrorism on one level or another. Some endure on a daily basis -- as you of all people well know.
We (Americans) have so long walked around with an attitude that "things like that" don't happen here, so perhaps it was an enormous wakeup call.
But it seems all we've done is hit the snooze button....
Posted by: Beth at July 20, 2004 09:42 AMa few months after the attacks, i began calling it "the stuff" because the media took what was the most catastrophic day in our nation's history and abbreviated it to "9/11" to, as david said, make it more mentally manageable... i had to take it one step further to show how silly and trivial we really can make something so awful sound...
tonight on espn they were talking about september 11. they showed footage of the towers, the pentagon and the crash site in pennsylvania. it wasn't just the "easy" shots either (the ones we have all seen a billion times). they showed footage of people hanging outside the tower windows, the people running for their lives outside the towers as they began to collapse, the police and military personnel running from the pentagon.
i couldn't stop watching. i got goosebumps. i almost cried, again. everyone at the bar (where i work) watched. we turned it off, because, well, we didn't want to do it again.
by the way, it was important, from a sports perspective, because sporting events completely ceased to exist for a few days after the attacks. so espn says anyway...
Posted by: kaleid at July 21, 2004 04:09 AMI'll tell you something about September 11, 2001. My daughter was just barely 2 months old. My phone rang at 7:30 in the morning, it was my sister and I heard her, in a very shaky voice, urge me to turn the television on to see what was happening. I turned it on, with a newborn suckling to my chest....and I watched over and over and over and saw the tragedy and the pain and the shock. I went into depression for approximately 3 months.....a time when I should have been enjoying my newborn. I cried, I panicked, I was terrified. My daughter is now 3 years old and I'm not so depressed....but I still cry when I think of the lives lost. The little ones born so soon after.....that will never know those of theirs that were taken.
It's a tragedy everywhere in the world.....from Serbia, to Jonestown, to Ethiopia, to New York, to China, to India, to my very own hometown....right down in the middle of the city! It's everywhere.
Posted by: Lujza at July 24, 2004 12:01 AMya know what pisses me off about it, the fact that because of "the shrub" (as you so wonderfully called him, i must steal that) has half the country believing saddam huessien is responsible for it and they think that's why we went to war because irag attacked us first. does anyone else find that absolutely absurd? i was watching something on cable about the guys from alabama going to fight and most of them said, well i dont want to go but they attacked us first or something along those lines, those poor men. they dont even know why they are fighting!!
Posted by: Elisha at August 20, 2004 05:51 PM