and time moves on

When my son got up this morning, he noticed all of the 9/11 memorial stuff on the guide and said, "Oh yeah, it's that day isn't it?"  Finding this to be the perfect opportunity, I asked him if he's learned anything about that day in school yet.  He's 11, in 6th grade - I was curious how they handle the subject in schools.  We hadn't had any major conversations about it before, so I wondered if they were spinning things in an "America - fuck yeah!" way or if they were completely skirting the issue has they had in previous years.

He said that they had actually learned quite a bit, and started rattling off facts like the number of terrorists, where the planes hit, how many terrorists per plane, how many thousands of people died, etc.  I was astonished!  This kid new more of the actual numeric facts than I did and he was only 13 months old when everything happened.  Still curious about any spin being put on it, I started talking about how people became so afraid and so scared when they didn't know what was going on that they started pointing fingers in all directions, and started a witch hunt of sorts...and then he chimed in and said, "Yeah, people became pretty racist for a while."  Oh thank goodness!  They're showing some of our faults as well.  Of course, I reminded him that some people haven't been able to shake that racism yet and keep that anger with them even today, and there are people with extremists in every race, religion, and political viewpoint.  (It's my job as a parent to try to prevent my own child from becoming this way.)

Then I got to thinking, kids of his generation, who didn't have to experience the horror, the confusion, the panic and the fear that we did on that day and the days following, will be looking at it so much differently than we do.  When we think of September 11th, we automatically remember where we were, what we were doing, the eerie silence afterwards, the facts or lack of facts being thrown out there in the 24-hour media stream and most of all our feelings as it was all unfolding in front of our eyes.  It's the emotions that take us back.  These kids luckily didn't have to experience all of that.  To them, learning about what happened that day is the same as learning about WWII.  It's history.  Granted, it's recent history and we're still feeling the effects of it - their parents are serving overseas in the military, transportation security is a true presence and the bad guys in films are usually terrorists instead of communists - but to a kid, it might as well be ancient history.

I think I'm thankful for this.  I hope that my son and all of our children never have to experience the things we did in those days.  I hope that someday our nation won't feel the need to overplay the hell out of every angle of the story over and over on the anniversary, I hope that people will stop using the day as an excuse to wave flags, accuse others of not loving their country, and showing their own extremist views against the "enemy," and I hope that someday soon the country as a whole can move on.  Maybe we'll have to wait until the kids of my son's generation are the ones in charge, though I hope the day comes sooner than that.