By Peter Jang
At 8 a.m. on September 11th, 2001, I was on a bus. There was no hijacking, no al-Qaeda, no terror. In fact, for the next couple hours, the twin towers would stand gleaming in the autumn sun, taken for granted as just another part of the always-magnificent Manhattan skyline.
If I’d known, then, that in a little less than an hour one plane would crash into the north tower, and that, soon after, a second would crash into the south tower, well, I probably wouldn’t have cared much for my morning math or the foolish stories I’d cooked up to tell my friends that day.
If I’d known, then, that Mr. Reid would tell us, with a gravity no twelve year old could possibly comprehend, that a plane had been hijacked, I wouldn’t have immediately told Max, my best friend, about a Johnny Quest book that I’d read where the Quest team’s plane had been hijacked by sky ninjas.
If I’d known, then, that all my friends would be picked up by their parents because, as the PA announced, there was the possibility of some danger in the Boston area, I wouldn’t have complained to my mom that I wanted to stay at school and be with my friends, when she’d raced into the city to pick me up first.
If I’d known, then, that my family and I would watch the news, first, as desperate workers in the towers leapt from impossible heights to escape the inferno inside, then, as the towers crumpled in on themselves with just the most dreadful kind of screaming and ashes, then I wouldn’t have watched TV at all.
If I’d known, then, that everything was going to change, that a war was going to be waged not a month later and that this decade-long war, labeled the war on terror could never truly be won when Americans had been force-fed an unreal amount of fear on that September day, then I wouldn’t have felt so proud when I watched thousands of troops file off to a land that would only burden us with more fear in the name of Bin Laden.
But I didn’t know any of these things as I rode my bus into school that morning and when the planes were hijacked and hurtled into the towers, bringing down the two tallest fixtures in the Manhattan skyline in less than a few hours, God, I tell you, all I felt was disbelief. Even as Mayor Giuliani rallied the people of New York City and, really, all the people of America, I could hardly comprehend any of it at all. What did it mean to be American? We were victims, survivors, protectors of a democratic dream, but we were targets too.
I have as many answers to this question today as I did on that September day, but I remember that, on that day, as I prayed fervently that God might actually please bless America, I realized that never again would I be able to take anything for granted least of all the Manhattan skyline, now, a little less magnificent than before 9/11.
