13 years later

Thirteen years ago I was thinking about two things: what I was going to do after high school and who I was going to ask for homecoming. I remember being told  by everyone that the next 10 years things were going to be boring  and well the worst thing that would happen is you would sell your house before it was worth anything.

Every generation has that happy period before things got "real". For my parents generation it was the summer of 62 before the Cuban missle crisis and the Kennedy Assasination. For my grandparents it was the summer of 41 before Pearl Harbor and the fall of 46 before the Cold War began. For many Europeans of an older and mostly gone generation it was the spring of 1914 before the slaughter of the Great War. We all wish we could go back , but we all know we can't. 

9/11 was the defining moment of my generation. It was our Pearl Harbor, our Kennedy Assasination, our Assasination of Archduke Ferdinand . It was our Remember the Maine. It will always be with us. Every American who wasn't there in Lower Manhattan saw it on our TVs and whether we realized it or not, it seriously messed us up. 9/11 was the beginning of a truly crappy decade that brought us a bogus war, Hurricane Katrina, a financial collapse, the Kardashians and a lot more things that we would rather forget ever happened.

9/11 left us all with a national case of PTSD .  And we haven't been allowed to heal. 

Politicians have used 

What happened that day for their own gain and have slowed the healing process. Over and over again they used it and ended up usually hurting people as opposed to helping them. How long did it take to get the Zadronga bill passed? How many first responders pay has been cut ? But these guys used 9/11  and instead of bringing us together and ending the divisions that hurt this country, they made it worse and they drove us further apart as people. At the same time people saw this as a way to make a buck and started selling 9/11. It became big business. People sold everything from commerative plates to 9/11 calendars. 

So now 13 years later we are slowly healing and the pain still remains for everyone who was effected  that day. They say we shall never forget, but who remembers the Maine? Who outside of our grandparents knows about Pearl Harbor or how the JFK Assasination effected everyone. History's a funny thing in that if you weren't alive for the given incident you don't really care. I know one day when Iam an old man my grandchildren won't care. And maybe that's okay,cause if we can pass on the lessons of what happened that day and how everyday people gave their lives and put themselves in harms way to help complete strangers not caring what race, creed or nationality they where. Then those people didn't die that day in vain.