Food For Thought/Thought For Food No. 22: 20 Years Later

I remember exactly where I was on September 11, 2001. It had been about 4 days into my 9th grade year in High School. That whole morning was nice: I woke up, had breakfast, got a hug from my mom, and off I went to school. So for the first few hours, all seemed well. Then an announcement rang over the entire intercom system for everyone to go to the auditorium, and that’s when everybody became a little on edge. The speaker came up onto the stage (It was either the announcement lady or principal. I can’t recall.), and then told us that the first of the two towers had fallen due to a terrorist attack. That announcement alone then put everybody completely on edge for the rest of that day. We weren’t allowed to go home early, for fear that there was going to be another attack. So, we all trudged through that day, nervous & scared than an airplane may or may not crash into the school.

I remember where my Mom & Dad were. Dad was at work for a few hours, and Mom was at home just randomly doing stuff around the house. A friend of hers called her up, and told her to go turn the TV on. If I recall right, I got home before my Father did, but once we were all together things seemed just a little bit better. Curiously enough, this song became something of a reminder to me of that awful day.

Black Hole Sun

Yeah yeah, I know that this is a few days late, but I confess I didn’t know what to do at first. I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to do this, but a curious thing convinced me to do so otherwise. It was this past Saturday during Connecticon, when I was watching the 2nd of 4 Cosplay Pro Wrestling shows. Before it actually took place, they had the audience stand up, and all of the wrestlers come up to the ring, and we all took part in a 10-bell salute to those lost on 9/11. That alone convinced to say something about the occasion. Again, this is a couple days late, but there’s still plenty of sentiment in the air about it, so I don’t think it’s that much of a sin.

Now, I could go into an entire political tirade about how this was all a giant cluster, as well as rage about the consequences we’re facing 20 years later, not to mention all of the increasingly awful fighting between both parties since then......but oddly I won’t. As incredibly tempting as it was to just have brain aneurysm about what happened.....I’m not. This post is about the 2,977 people that died that day (1 of which was a family member on my Mom’s side.). This is about the over 25,000 people who were injured by this event, and those who are still suffering health problem even now because of the collapses. To those that died, I hope you’re at peace. To those that are still with us, I say keep on going. To those that are still hurting, I hope the pain goes away.

So that my thought on 9/11, 20 years later. It’s still incredible to think that the attack happened 2 decades ago, but hopefully we’ve learned something from then. Well, I’m taking a break for the rest of the month, and come October I got another band I’ll be covering for the occasion......but with a twist. See you then!

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Still a highly powerful moment over 2 years later:

Jon Stewart says Congress 'should be ashamed' over inaction on helping 9/11 first responders (PBS)

And still a highly powerful moment over 20 years later:

Lilian Garcia sings the national anthem: SmackDown, Sept. 13, 2001