9/11: The Day The Earth Stood Still

There are millions upon millions of articles and blog posts about 9/11 that will all have a more provoking meaning than this one. This blog needed writing, especially on this 10 year anniversary we are honouring today.

I remember vividly my own memories of 9/11. I was 8 at the time - and just home from school. I flicked the TV on, ready for the children's programmes to start, but was met with an image of two burning towers. I shouted through to Mum 'The Twin Towers have been hit by two planes' - reading the tagline from the breaking news, before being told to stop making things up. However, when she came through, she was glued to the telly too, watching this grotesque and vulgar act pan out across the world's media.

I remember watching them fall, and the next morning too. Dad's birthday is the 10th September, and Mum's is the 12th - and she just didn't want to celebrate her birthday. The newspapers were all full of the most horrific images, and every TV channel was showing the previous day's events. I remember school being one of the most sombre days to memory - with assemblies and a minute's silence - a very novel idea to an eight year-old. Every lesson had some element of sadness, and nobody wanted to be there. Bearing in mind we're from the UK, it proves quite how big a global impact Bin Laden's scheme had caused.

Nobody could really calculate quite how big an impact this would leave. The Twin Towers were once the tallest buildings on Earth, and now they're a graveyard, and nothing but steel and rubble at ground level. But looking back upon that fateful day, it wasn't the actual attacks that touched me the most, but the reaction of the American people.

Yes, of course there were tears, and sadness, and it was the worst day in American history. But there was a sense of patriotism, and almost a sense of pride that their country would continue to stand tall, and that the attacks would not halt their wonderful America.

That's what I'll remember - there are some poignant interviews on the internet with people who lost loved ones, yet still feel that pride in their country.

Today, we remember the 2,977 people who lost their lives in the events of September 11. We also see all their names unveiled in public for the first time at the World Trade Center Memorial. Today will be a day that will bring back horrific memories, but also that feeling of not being beaten down by Al-Qaeda, and that the American people can never be beaten.

Taken from General Musings of an Idiot: http://www.gmoai.com