Not Forgetting...

Some might find this tiresome, yet another column about September 11, 2001?
I find it neither tiresome nor cliche.
I find it obligatory.

Six years later, and it seems people have stopped caring. While it is impossible to forget the events of that day, the public at large seems to have pushed it to the back of their minds.

A new poll came out this week saying most Americans think about the attacks at least once a week, and many once a day. I would be a member of the later group. Whenever there is a bomb in Iraq, a suspicious package in a park, a new al Queda threat, or when someone goes to the airport, the effects of 9-11 are felt.

I remember everything about that day. I remember things I said to people, I remember the temperature of the room I was in when my teacher told me what had happened, I remember telling the kids in the lunchroom to be quiet so I could listen to the Defense briefing. I remember asking Mr. Boyle why we were outside for recess when there were airplanes crashing into buildings. I remember sitting in a darkened classroom while my science teacher informed us about the VX nerve gas in Indiana. I remember running from the bus stop to the waiting van and screaming at my parents about my cousin in NYC, and asking if he was all right, then waiting two-hours in line to get gas. I remember the family huddled on the couch, listening to the President speak to the nation, and wondering if we would go to school tomorrow.I remember that MTV was down, and that I turned it off at bedtime, and when I turned it on in the morning, the video playing the night before was on in the exact place where it had been when I turned it off. And I remember every day afterwards, constantly watching the news.

Which is one of the good things to come out of that tragic day. After 9-11, my personal world, along with that of the entire planet, changed forever. I woke up, and realized that MTV was not important. Make-up, CDs, boys- all seemed to have lost their importance. I started to watch the news, devour politics. And I think I'm the better for it.

However, there is one thing that I must address on this commemoration. Last night here, on the IUB campus, was a (-11 conspiracy group. These people, perhaps more than bin Laden himself, really get my blood flowing. How, in the face of mountains of science, can these people still believe that 9-11 was an "inside job?" It has been proven time and time again that cell phones work up to an altitude of 50,000 ft., and planes fly at 30,000 ft. You don't need to melt steel to compromise a building's structural integrity, just weaken it, and those "secondary explosions" are nothing more than air being forced out of the building as floor after floor falls on top of each other in an accordion-like fashion. And I support the President completely, but I do not believe that he could keep a secret as monumental as that.

America vowed never to forget the events of that day, but they seem to have started to. Each year, the remembrances get smaller and smaller. Less and less airtime is devoted to the attacks and the memorials of them. However, I will continue, every year, to write my remembrances. I cannot, and will not, forget that day, and America should not either. Every year, this day should serve as a reminder of the evil that is still out there, still determined to strike at America in any way possible. it should remind us that we should treasure our freedom every day, and never take for granted that we live in the greatest nation on Earth: the United States of America, and it should serve as a reminder of how united we all were after that day, and possible help us to get there again. The fate of our nation depends on it.