Opaque Lucidity

Runneth Not To The Contrary

I listened to one of my co-workers this morning as she told the story of her daughter's first day of kindergarten. When I returned to my PC, I looked down in the corner of the screen and realized that it's September 10th. What a date.

We tend to think of the world changing for us Americans on September 11th, 2001. If that's true (and I believe it is), then September 10th, 2001 represents the last full day of an era. For most of us, little things are different now, like airport security. But our nation was made very different by the events of 9/11, changes that affect almost every facet of our society: moral, economic, social, etc. Those of us who were adults on 9/11/01 remember the world that was and realize we were like naive kids on that Monday before.

I had the realization this morning that most children 10 and younger today have no recollection of the events of that terrible day. They have grown up in a world where terrorism inside our borders is a potential reality, not the stuff of action movies. They will take this in stride, just as children in Israel learn that there are radical Muslims willing to kill themselves in the hope of taking a few Israelis with them. The idea of planes flying into and destroying skyscrapers will not seem outlandish to them---it will be just another over-analyzed history lesson.

One member of my Texas family has a daughter who was born in 1995. Kelli and I traveled to Dallas just two weeks after 9/11 and one night we all went out to dinner. The conversation in the car turned to New York (most of the family is from the Bronx) and the daughter, who was six, said simply, "Planes fly into buildings there." It wasn't a statement of shock or anger, but simply a statement of fact. Planes fly into buildings here. In the United States. Our home.

Some of you might read this and think that it was time for us to wake up to the violence in the rest of the world, some of which this nation helps perpetrate. But despite our many wars and natural disasters, the American experience at home maintained a sort of blissful, if unaware, peace. Those children now in the early years of their education will never know that peace.