On the Season 5 episode of the adult animated comedy Family Guy, titled “It Takes A Village Idiot, and I Married One”, the family matriarch Lois Griffin declares “9/11 was bad”.
Twenty-five years later, we see with more clarity exactly what Lois stated. 9/11 was bad. This is a statement that cannot be debated. The attack and its rippling after effects birthed a new epoch in our human timeline, and I was fifteen years old when the world fractured into “before” and “after”.
Let’s take a step back and establish the “before”, as someone who experienced the “before” in stereo (where available).
I was born in 1986. That makes me a member of Generation Y, the Millennial Generation. Mine is the generation identified as “Internet natives”, mine is the generation blamed for killing every ding-dang industry (just like the Zoomers are being blamed now, and just as the Boomers were blamed before), and mine is the generation that also happens to experience every terrible world event, starting from birth.
The Cold War.
The Cold War was actually more terrifying than I pictured it to be. I used to laugh at the popular culture that would spring up from it, the Red Dawns and the 99 Red Balloons and the Day Afters (ROCK CHAAAALLLLKKKK) and all the fires that we didn’t start, but age brings two sisters, empathy and experience, and when I took a moment to put myself into the shoes of someone living under the constant threat of total nuclear annihilation, well…
That didn’t stop our parents from falling in love, from starting families, from growing together or pulling apart, from swimming or sinking or tossing and turning, and during the period of 1981 to 1996 came marching the feet of little Millennials.
We came into a dawning of a new age. Technology was making jumps at rapid speeds. We remember an analog world, and we adapted into a digital one. We built the foundation of Internet culture, memes, absurdity.
Tangent: Zoomers, I love your humor. It’s the next evolution of mine, it’s absurd as fuck, just keep making funny memes. Give me the funny memes.
Back on track: And while the Cold War cooled, we found ourselves to be a very lucky little generation indeed. Compared to children of previous generations, we had it pretty good.
We weren’t under threat of total nuclear destruction.
And we had Dunkaroos.
The next big event, I would argue, was the Oklahoma City Bombing, which happened when I was in the second grade. It’s my first fracture. It’s the crack that, once splintered, whispered “the world isn’t as safe as you thought it was, and guess what – it was never safe to begin with”. Not a comforting thing to an already anxious child.
(I should talk about my anxiety later. It was diagnosed when I was two. I wish…I really wish I was making that kind of shit up, but anxiety and Lady Blake are two peas in a pod, yes we are, cute little peas that rub against each other until we blister and until the Lexapro washes all of that away.)
But when you’re a man on the street and you’re asking strangers what events define modern human existence, they will always say, “What, were your born under a rock? NINE ELEVEN!”
(And then they will probably rant about Covid for like, a month.)
(I digest.)
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was fifteen. I had just begun my freshman year at Wichita South High School. Go Titans. Woo. My first class of the morning was Honors Science Survey, which, if I could describe it, was a sampling of all the science courses South High had on offer, but taught at a more advanced level. Now, I was never a super studious kid. I didn’t really put a lot of effort into my work, I just did it. And somehow, that got me bumped up into the “honors” classes, which were offered to students who might not feel as academically challenged by their current grade level’s curriculum.
I liked my courses. I wasn’t challenged by them, per se, and now that I look back on it, I probably should have been placed in the IB program at Wichita East High School. That would have instilled discipline and a deeper love for knowledge than the education I received at South. It’s not a bad school, I mean, Don Johnson is an alum, THE Don Johnson, Mr. Melanie Griffin, Mr. Miami Vice, but…
It wasn’t great.
There were entire hallways where no one ever turned on the got’dang lights.
Wow, that was quite the story grandma let’s get back on track.
ANYWAY.
Facts: I was fifteen. I was a freshman. I was in Honors Science Survey in E-Hall, taught by Ms. Nye (who, to this day, I want to reach out to and say “did you know you intimidated me because I thought you were just so cool, too cool to be a teacher”). And Ms. Nye was sitting at the front of the class, criss cross applesauce on top of a scarred black science table, as she said, “and this week, you know, we’re going to cover…”
She wasn’t Gen X, the coolest Generation, she was probably of the in-between, the one between the Boomers and the Xers. But the thing was she REMINDED me of the cool Gen X’ers that I so idolized (and at my big age of 40, I still look up to them for advice and I think they’re just too damn cool) so I sat far in the back, totally intimidated by her cool aura.
“She must know I am deeply, deeply uncool,” I probably thought, from my seat in the far back, right next to the door, so I could leave quickly and quietly if I ever needed to.
Anxiety does things to a girl.
7:43 I decide I’m going to get up.
“Ms. Nye, can I have a hall pass?” I ask.
Explanation: we were assigned a page of “hall passes” in our daily planners, you know the ones if you’re of my age group. We only had so many for the first semester, and so many for the second semester. Not fair to police piss breaks, but I’m pretty sure the admins were trying to keep kids from sneaking off to the Smoking Wall.
“Oh, sure, just bring me your planner,” Ms. Nye says.
7:44 I’m walking down E-Hall with my planner and my purse, a small bronze backpack. It wasn’t cool. None of my purses became cool until I was sixteen and started copying trends more closely.
I slip into the girls bathroom and I probably take a pee, I probably fiddle with my CoverGirl powder compact, I just got to wear makeup in 2001 for my fifteenth birthday and I was so excited to take any opportunity to play with my burgundy lipstick and my powder compact, all CoverGirl of course.
(Do you remember that compact? The little round tortoise shell one? That’s the ticket.)
7:45 the world splits. The crack is tiny, but sharp. Snap. After.
7:49, 7:50, I’m probably walking back to Honors Science Survey, at the farthest end of E-Hall, near the exit door.
(I only know these times because I still have that hall pass.)
There’s a strange stillness in the hall. Teachers are scurrying. “You should get back to class.” One is rolling a cart into her classroom, one of those black metal things that hold a CRT television. Radios – do you remember those? – radios are on in the classrooms where there are no carts. Carts are a premium, you gotta remember. Each hall was only assigned a few televisions. It was unfathomable that more than one or two rooms would need them simultaneously.
I twirl my hair, tied into a tight, tight ponytail (I always wore a skull-shriekingly tight ponytail, my skull hairsprayed as smoothly as possible to camouflage the baby hairs, it was the ugliest hairstyle). I’m not aware of the crack. What crack? I’m still in the before.
I slip back into my classroom, into my scuffed wooden chair, right next to the door. Ms. Nye has her CRT tv on, set to ABC, NBC, CBS, any of them, does it matter? As long as it was an analog channel, there it was set, the picture set on the Twin Towers, one is burning, and I’m curious. What’s this?
Now, the rest of the fine details are thin, as it’s been twenty-five years, so allow me some liberties. But this is what I remember:
I remember sitting in Honors Science Survey. I remember the terror gripping at me, tearing at my chest, begging to burst, and I remember, the tears.
“She’s crying!”
“Oh, shut up, you’re such a fucking douchebag!”
“HEY! We don’t say that!”
“But he’s being a fucking douchebag!”
“Guys, guys, please.”
And the rest of the day?
I just don’t remember a whole lot in clear detail, not like I remember the morning. Study hall consisted of watching the television in stark silence. Typing class (oh my God yes, I actually took a TYPING CLASS) consisted of the teacher begging us to get back on track while we shirked off classwork to use the early Internet to find out what in the actual world was going on, and I don’t remember what my final class of the day was…I just don’t.
But I remember the drive home.
I remember the stillness in the sky above me. All planes were grounded, and in flyover country, you sort of notice when there isn’t a single plane in the sky. I remember the cars wrapped around the street, waiting to get into QuikTrip to fill their tanks, who knows what tomorrow’s going to look like so it’s smart to top off the tank.
I remember wanting to see the newest episode of Dead Last that night. You won’t remember the show, no one does. But it was on the WB for a season, and then it was gone. I remember wanting to see the newest episode because I was utterly obsessed with the silly little show, and it was a comfort. It was a show that was filmed and produced before the crack.
Whence came the time to turn the TV to the WB, I wasn’t met with the opening credits to Dead Last.
I was met with The News.
I may have screamed. I may have cried. I don’t remember my emotional state, but I remember being quite upset. I mean, I was a little ball of anxiety and my feelings were huge. I just wanted to feel like it was all going to be alright, I just wanted to dive into a show that I loved, a show starring Tyler Labine, and he looked just. like. my. closest. friend. at the time, and…I was a kid, man. I just wanted every little thing to be alright.
I didn’t sleep that night. I do remember that. Fear kept me tossing and turning in my sheets.
I once kept a journal. It was one I purchased in the Borders inside Towne West Square. Blue marbled cover, cream colored pages. Sunflowers inset on the front cover. I destroyed it in my twenties and I wish I hadn’t because it contained my entire high school experience. And I wrote a journal entry that afternoon, between coming home from school and hoping to watch Dead Last, but being met with more news. More news. More news.
Damn, I wish I hadn’t destroyed that primary source.
I have done both the anthropological and sociological worlds a disservice by destroying a primary source and this is my apology.
The sick humor in all of this, the sick humor that I find as a Millennial who processes trauma using humor (remember when we all did that watching HBO’s Chernobyl?), is that if the world didn’t stop turning that day (thank you Toby Keith and your cash grab, I mean, your tribute to 9/11 and its victims), the biggest news in the world would have been Michael Jordan’s return to basketball.
He was also the big age of 40 at that time, wasn’t he?
I remember all the boys in my elementary school classes wearing Starter jackets, Chicago Bulls. We all lived in Wichita, KS. Who cared what Illinois was up to, but that was the power of Michael Jordan.
I’m feeling very nostalgic, very sentimental, very quiet right now.
We had it good, before the crack. And sometimes I linger on alternative history, what the world would look like if 9/11 never happened?
We wouldn’t have to take our shoes off at airports. That’s always embarrassing. My feet sweat, and you’re asking me to take my shoes off?
Wait, a lady never sweats.
She glows.
(I digest.)
*
Every year I have a habit of turning on YouTube and watching archival footage of 9/11, as it happened. YouTube has it all. One of my favorite videos contrasts the crack much more clearly than the others, and it’s a 25-year-old archival video from the Today show.
When I see it, it reminds me that Harry Belafonte also shared this planet with us, and it lifts my heart up just a little bit. Despite all the heavy, heavy, heavy darkness we carry, we can still take the time to celebrate the good. We can sing, we can dance, and we can march forward. Why slide backwards into despair? There’s still calypso.
I don’t know why, but the Harry Belafonte segment before the world changes just touches me. I have always loved and admired the man. That, and the Tracey Ullman interview. God, we love Tracey Ullman.
If you have not taken the time to watch any archival footage, just…just do it. Watch it. Sit with the weight of it. And remember.
Remember.
Always remember.
I’m a Millennial, I’ve laughed at the South Park episodes, I’ve laugh at the stupid memes and jokes, I leave a can of Skoal and a Bud Light for Toby Keith on 9/10 so I can get a gift under the 9/11 tree, I laugh because if I don’t, I just slip into blackness and why fucking bother, slipping into blackness means that those who want to quash it win. Why let them win?
But I also remember it, 25 years later.
God, it’s been a quarter of a century.
The ripples suck.
Calypso!
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