It’s hard to believe that it’s been 15 years. I can still remember sitting in my first-grade classroom as the routine morning announcements played on the television, just as they had every day. Nothing unusual. When the announcements were over, my teacher turned on a local news broadcast. Maybe she had heard what was happening. Maybe it was a coincidence. I don’t remember.
The date was Sept. 11, 2001. I was 6 years old.
I don’t remember many details of the day’s events. They’ve grown foggy with time. But there’s one that I can’t forget. I’ll never understand why my teacher thought it was a good idea to keep that television on. Perhaps she got lost in the gravity of the moment and forgot we were watching with her. But as she, like millions of others, sat glued to the live feed coming in from New York, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. One plane crash could be an accident, but not two. It was the moment the world realized America was under attack.
There are certain moments in history that will forever impact the people who lived through it. Ask anyone who can still remember, and they’ll tell you exactly where they were when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. For people even older, ask about when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. These watershed moments defined their respective generations.
But time passes. New generations grow up and supplant the old. The anniversaries of these events no longer resonate with the solemn weight they once held.
And now, a decade and a half later, 9/11 is succumbing to the same fate. A sizeable chunk of the population has no memory of it. My brother, who was 3 years old at the time, was too young to remember. He’s now a freshman in college, and he’s not alone. I’m at the tail end of the age demographic who has any recollection.
And even though my memory mostly consists of one vivid detail, it’s still only a fragment. I wasn’t old enough to justly grasp the magnitude of what was happening in the same fashion as my parents, for example. The attacks didn’t change my life in any way as a child. They didn’t shake my worldview or make me question my faith in humanity. I knew something was happening — it was plastered all over the newspaper and TV — but I didn’t know what exactly was happening or what it meant.
This rising generation of teenagers and young adults has grown up in a purely post-9/11 world. Yet while it’s been 15 years, ramifications are still evident. Aftershocks from the attacks influence foreign and domestic policy and, specifically, the fight against radical Islamic terrorism and the Islamic State group. It’s an issue that has reared its ugly head several times in the last calendar year, with the bombings in Brussels, the hijacked truck in Nice, France, and the shootings at the Bataclan theater in Paris and Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, to name a few.
After each attack, we like to tell ourselves that we’ll never forget. It makes us feel better to show such signs of solidarity. But our proclivity to forget is both dangerous and inevitable.
It has been said that those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. This is true. But more importantly, they deserve to repeat it.
Brian Lee is a UF English senior. His column appears on Thursdays.
