“You awake, Brian?”
Those words, coming from my freshman-year Geometry teacher, provided a shot of adrenaline during an extremely groggy Tuesday morning in a dark, projector-lit classroom.
I always fell asleep in class when I was in high school. I couldn’t help it. And while I was usually pretty good about masking my grogginess, Mr. Murphy caught me this particular morning as he looked up from a problem he was solving.
That’s about the extent of what I remember that morning. That is, until I walked into my Tuesday seminar and saw burning buildings on the television set in the corner.
My first reaction: What movie is this? I was a big fan of large-scope action films such as Independence Day — those that involved incredible international (and sometimes extraterrestrial) crises. I figured this was another one I just had to watch.
But almost immediately I noticed the channel was set to CNN, and that the burning buildings were the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
This was my September 11.
It’s difficult to say what I was thinking about as this was happening. The news being reported was that two planes had hit the towers. For some stupid reason, I wondered if it was an accident; the sound was muted on the TV as it usually was and 14-year-olds have a tendency to be naive about some things.
But from talking about it with classmates and Mr. Snyder, the teacher in my next class (language arts), all I knew was that it definitely wasn’t an accident.
It was around that time when I heard the name Osama bin Laden for the first time.
Every day, Mr. Snyder would have the class write something on a full piece of paper. It didn’t matter what you wrote about. You could write anything. The point was to practice the craft and to better translate thoughts into written words.
Nothing changed on September 11; our assignment stayed the same. All I could write about was what was occurring in front of me — on the television set.
I wrote as I watched the towers bellowing smoke and listened to alarms blaring through New York City. I wrote as the cameras caught people jumping from burning windows. I wrote during the first collapse. Then the second. Then during the video clips of screaming people running down the street. These things only happen in movies, I recalled. Now it’s reality.
I still have that piece of paper in a bedroom closet in Saginaw, Michigan. I stowed it away moments after I found my mother sitting up in bed, tears in her eyes with the TV channel set to CNN. “You’re going to remember today for the rest of your life,” she said.
* * * * *
I’m not going to pretend like I know what life would be like today had it not been for 9/11. I reminisce about the past, but I don’t hold regrets close to home or even wonder too much about what things would be like had I made different decisions. There is a reason behind everything that happens, even if it’s menial, and the only thing you can control is what’s in front of you at this moment.
I’m not even sure if 9/11 changed me on a personal level in the years that followed. I certainly remembered it. I still have copies of USA Today and The Saginaw News from that day, plus the special editions released one year later. My family and I visited New York City in 2002 and visited Ground Zero, touring around to all the memorials in the area and paying our respects. And I’ve always followed the news closely throughout my life, though I wasn’t intent on becoming a journalist that early in my high school years (I was leaning toward graphic design).
So without much of a personal, emotional connection to it all, 9/11 was simply a reminder to me of the reality of life is and how nothing should be taken for granted. Sure, we had to take positives out of watching this country bleed that day. We had to look up to the fortunes we really had and be thankful for the troops who sacrifice every day to keep this nation strong. But if life was a bedroom, 9/11 was the teddy bear in the corner. A memory and little more.
That brings me to May 1, 2011.
A lot has changed since I first took notice of Osama bin Laden. I graduated through two levels of education, I worked two jobs along with three internships and I made dozens of new friends while (sadly) losing touch with dozens of others. I’m now 1,900 miles away from Michigan, a place I called home my entire life up until this past September.
And here I am, finally watching the news break before my eyes on Twitter and on CNN while I was working at The Republic. Osama bin Laden — the poster boy of evil, the mastermind behind the greatest tragedy on our soil, the closest thing America had to a comic-book villain — is dead.
My first thought: How on earth am I not more happy about this? This is a man I was taught to hate for 10 years. His face was made into a proverbial dart board in the media and in much of the entertainment I watched during my teenage and young-adult years. His death brought hundreds to the streets of Washington, chanting “U-S-A!” and signing the National Anthem.
You know what that actually reminded me of? It reminded me of people in foreign countries burning the American flag. It reminded me of watching videos of people celebrating in the streets following Sept. 11. It reminded me that for how evil we made bin Laden out to be, for how powerful of a figure we claimed he was, he really was not. When was the last time you thought about him before news of his death broke? Probably not for a while. He was a man in hiding for many years; long enough to make his existence almost a moot point.
This is not an extension of sympathy to bin Laden; I’ve always felt he was a man who deserved to die for the actions he was ultimately responsible for. But I think the most important thing we will eventually take from May 1, 2011 is that May 1, 2011 will hold little significance to the transcendence of humanity. Especially compared to 9/11. It may be a victory to some, but it’s certainly a shallow one. It doesn’t mean the wars we’re fighting are over. It doesn’t mean our everyday lives are safer. It doesn’t even mean gas prices will go down.
It means one more man is dead. And such is life.
I apologize if this post seems like a bunch of scribbling. I guess my point is that May 1, for me, is simply a reminder of the reality of life just like 9/11 was nearly 10 years ago. Except it’s a much smaller reminder. We can be happy all we want about Osama bin Laden being dead but, once all the dust from this media storm settles, we’re going to realize that we’re living life just like we did the week before, contributing to society the same way we did the week before and, most of all, facing the same struggles we were the week before.
Posted by Brian Manzullo at May 5, 2011
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