I was talking the other day to one of my neighbor’s daughters who is 17 and is starting college in the Fall. In passing I mentioned 9/11 to her and got only a vague response. And it occurred to me: she was only 10 when 9/11 occurred and although she must have been aware of a national tragedy at the time, she had other pre-teen things to worry about; she really doesn’t have the same sort of memory of it that I and others who are older do. To her it is something that happened in history, a long time ago. My question: I know there are a lot of posters on this message board who are a lot younger than 17. Are there any for whom 9/11 really is just a historical event without any visceral meaning? What do you think about?
Not to rag on your neighbor’s daughter, but if she was 10 when 9/11 happened and it’s “only history” to her, then I doubt she’s very bright.
When I was 9-10, the first Gulf War was big news and we talked about it in school all the time. I have to say, I would be very surprised if 9/11 was not brought up at her school at all when it happened.
My little brother is fifteen and is the biggest 9/11 crackpot I know. It most definitely has a visceral meaning for him, but I think a lot of that has to do with watching conspiracy theory movies and not necessarily with his memories of the event itself.
My seventeen year old niece is offering up her memories of it, which I’ll try to transcribe: “It was really weird. I remember we didn’t go to school and didn’t do anything but watch the TV and you guys talked about it. I wasn’t really scared then, because I couldn’t make sense of it. It was too big for me. About a year later I really understood it and was a little upset, but then it was already in the past. Now, it’s like, yeah, that happened and it was bad, but I couldn’t make sense of it at the time.”
I was “only” eight years old when JFK was killed. I have very vivid memories of that day and the ones that followed.
My son is 10, and was obviously very young on 9/11/01. I just asked him what he thought about 9/11 - is it “ancient history”, like WWII would be to him?
His answer kind of surprised me. He actually remembers when it happened, especially all of the notices hung up in local stores seeking information about lost loved ones (we live in NYC).
He told me that 9/11 has changed everyone’s lives, from being afraid to travel to possibly being drafted to fight in Iraq when he turns 18.
So, just from personal experience, not everyone younger than 17 thinks of that day as the dim, distant past. We’re all living with the repercussions of it every day.
In another 10 years, kids who were born on 9/11 will be going to college.
Upon reflection, I think my niece nailed why, to some people in her generation, it might not have had much impact: it was “too big.” JFK’s assassination involved a well-known public figure being killed while driving in a car. That’s a very easy thing for a kid to understand. A ten year old thousands of miles away from NYC will understand that something bad has happened, and will be able to see how upset the adults are around him or her, but in some cases might not be able to truly grasp the enormity of what’s happened. My niece doesn’t see it as being ancient history though, for what it’s worth; she sees it as something she didn’t understand well when it happened.
The Kiddo was three years, one month, and three days old on 9/11/2001. He knows what happened. He doesn’t recognize the phrase “9/11” with the events of that day at this point, but he knows that some terrorists hijacked planes, knocked down the “Twin Towers”, and caused a terrible tragedy…and he knows the name “Osama bin Laden” because of that day…
He doesn’t have any direct recollection of the day, but it’s definitely more than “just history” to him.
My daughter was 5 so we sheltered her from most of the heavy stuff, although it was inevitable that she would hear friends or other people talking about it, so we distilled it down to 5-year-old level.
We have talked with her (and my son, who was only 3 and clueless) about it every year, and she understands a little more all the time. She remembers it only vaguely but at 12 has a reasonable understanding of what happened. We have taken a dozen trips by air since then and we talk about it almost every time we go through security.
But children are not just short adults and do not have the capability to process events like this, as **CaerieD ** says of her niece. I know a kid my daughter’s age whose parents dumped everything about 9/11 on him when it was happening and I think the poor kid is going to need therapy forever.
I’ve already seen “man on the street” interviews with college students who didn’t know what year the events of 9/11 happened.
I’m not calling anyone stupid, but we’re heading towards the time when half the people interviewed think that 9/11 happened because Muslims were mad at Danish cartoons.
My dad was 5 on V-E day and remembers it very well. It all depends on context.
Ronald Semone , where do you live? The small town in Eastern Washington I lived in at the time seemed to be affected much less drastically than most of the people in big cities. Our day to day lives and attitudes barely changed. I’ve got a couple of theories about this:
–A small town is much less likely to be a terrorist target than a big city
–NYC almost seems like a seperate planet both culturally and geographically
–It’s a poor area with farmworkers the biggest single employment group. With a life that tough, terrorism is just another thing you’ve got to get through.
I was 9 when the terrorists killed the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. I’ve never forgotten it; the ski-masked individual at the railing is my default image for “evil.”
I remember just after 9/11 that there was a great fear of hate crime against Muslims and there were pot shots at mosques etc. I imagine the kids in school had a lot of lectures or other discussions about it. It could be that the neighbor’s kid got such a glut of it that she knows it inside out and doesn’t find it interesting any more.
I was in elementary school when 9-11 happened, and while I wouldn’t say that it has passed into history for me, I would say that it’s become part of something bigger, a something which encompasses the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and even current US beefs with Iran to some extent. I see it as a starting point, so I suppose in a way it has become history in that it’s the beginning of a timeline, albeit one that hasn’t run out yet.
My actual memories are pretty clear. My mom woke me up to come watch the news since a plane had hit the Twin Towers, and that she was fixing me cereal when the second one hit. I stayed glued to the TV until it was time to go to school, there was some discussion about it there, and then all my 9/11 related memories afterwards fade into a cloud of people making vague patriotic gestures and then the invasion of Afghanistan.
I’m checking out an 80’s timeline (I was born in 73), and the first world even I’ve seen that I actually remember from when it happened was 1984, the Aids epidemic…
The next one is in 1986, the Challenger explodes. This is the first one that actually doesn’t feel to me like “history from the past”, and is really within living memory to me.
Mind you, nothing quite as world-altering as 9/11 happened back then…
S^G
Doesn’t it depend on what you mean by “only” history? My grandfather fought in WWI. On 12/7/41, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, my mother, seven years old, didn’t understand why my grandfather cried.
On 11/23/63, I heard that the President had been shot. My 10-year-old self couldn’t believe an immortal like the leader of the free world could die…my brother, born six years later, told me he saw the assassination as only something that kept the Vietnam war going strong.
On 8/9/74, President Richard Nixon resigned, mainly as a result of the Watergate scandal. My older daughter, born in 1980, saw this part of history only as a movie & later a tv miniseries.
There are other events that might affect people as “only” history. On 12/8/80, John Lennon died. To me this was a matter of an exbeatle, exhusband, bad dad rocker who bit the dust. To my husband, a major fan, it was a trajedy.
It all depends on one’s point of view.
Love, Phil
I’m 18, my birthday is late November so I was the same age as your neighbor’s daughter when it happened.
I remember everything was very dreary, I mean the sky was clear, but the general tone of the day kind of has the “tone” of a Poe novel. I understood what happened, and the entire day was kind of shot, a lot of kids weren’t there. We had a few scheduled school lessons, presumably to keep our minds off it, but I remember specifically in my Language Arts (English with a fancy name) class we had the news on and basically just watched it.
Our school was near an Air Force base, that even then I understood realistically had a very small chance of being attacked, but many parents felt it was still too much of a risk. Others, like mine and my friends, thought letting us all talk and socialize was much more important to our acceptance. I agree, I cracked the first joke in the group, and my friend got mad for a brief second and then said, essentially echoing my feelings “you know, never mind, they’re terrorists, the only way we’re going to beat them is by coping and not dwelling on this, by not feeling terror.” Well, maybe not quite as eloquently, he doesn’t talk like that, but the general message was there. After that for most of the day, except language arts we made a half-arsed 6th grade attempt at “boycotting our fear” in “retaliation” to the attacks, which is more than I can say for most of the students, a few of whom had to be sent home after completely losing their composure (nothing wrong with that of course).
Overall it is most definitely NOT ancient history, I don’t think I’ll ever forget any but the most intricate details of that day. I understood what was going on, how could we not? It was beaten in every three seconds until we invaded the Middle East. I think it all depends, most of the people I know that were “sheltered” on that day seem to think of it as a nebulous cloud of badness, a vague point in their history they knew was terrible but weren’t certain WHY. Those of us who got more into the world around 9/11, who got a larger dose of the atmosphere, were more affected and feel more attached to that day, because we got to SEE the ramifications and how different people were reacting to the incident.
I was about 11 during the Iranian hostage crisis. I recall discussing it avidly on the playground. It was in the news all the time. I don’t recall any of us being confused as to its importance or feeling like it was over our heads. Everyone had very definitive views about it, mostly commonly “We should just bomb them!”
First news event I recall clearly was the Pipa Alpha Oil rig explosion in 1988 (IIRC). I was 6.
I was 16 when the 9/11 attacks happened. I remember exactly what was going on and where I was and the events of that day. I think it’s more significant for me because the high school I went to was about 20 minutes from D.C. and a lot of my fellow classmates had parents or relatives that worked in D.C. Hell, if my dad had been in his office at the time he would have been able to see the route the plane took when it hit the Pentagon. I can’t say it would have had a less impact on me if I lived in a different area, but I definitely think the closer you are to an event like that the more vivid you’ll remember it and the more important it will be.