9/11. 22 years ago! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[mom2rtk]

Not really.

Growth comes from discomfort.

I’m hoping I’m misunderstanding your comment.

 

[kdonnel]

I’m hoping I’m misunderstanding your comment.

You might be, I have no idea what you are thinking.

Here is the basis for the quote.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ts the idea that,as an opportunity for growth.

Research supports the idea that discomfort can be a catalyst for growth. One way to avoid growth, while reinforcing your comfort zone, is to only associate with like-minded people. The next time you experience discomfort, don't run away from it. Embrace it as an opportunity for growth.

I feel like a society united by tragedy or war is experiencing a very limited and short lived emotion that actually slows the advancement of the society.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

Last night around 10 p.m I was having a snack in the kitchen. My cousin came home from work and sat with me. We have a small TV in the kitchen and she said she'd been watching a 9/11 documentary at work (she's a bartender for the VFW.) She turned on the TV to that doc. It has been 22 years, and I still had to excuse myself and leave the room. I just can't do it.

I just wanted to add that yes, we all felt united as Americans. I felt that. But I was friends with a Muslim woman, you see. After it happened, the women in her family stopped wearing their hijabs because they had been threatened and harassed when they went out in the months after 9/11. I don't want to make anybody feel bad or angry in this thread with this post, but that's part of the story as well. I still keep in touch with Fatima on FB, and she never did go back to wearing her head covering.

 

[amcnj]

The town I grew up in has a ceremony every year on 9/11, to remember the event and the residents who never returned home that day.

 

[georgina]

I just wanted to add that yes, we all felt united as Americans. I felt that. But I was friends with a Muslim woman, you see. After it happened, the women in her family stopped wearing their hijabs because they had been threatened and harassed when they went out in the months after 9/11. I don't want to make anybody feel bad or angry in this thread with this post, but that's part of the story as well. I still keep in touch with Fatima on FB, and she never did go back to wearing her head covering.

I had similar thoughts to the comments about us all being united then. Recently read Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, with some parallels.

 

[Dan Murphy]

just wanted to add that yes, we all felt united as Americans. I felt that. But I was friends with a Muslim woman, you see. After it happened, the women in her family stopped wearing their hijabs because they had been threatened and harassed when they went out in the months after 9/11. I don't want to make anybody feel bad or angry in this thread with this post, but that's part of the story as well. I still keep in touch with Fatima on FB, and she never did go back to wearing her head covering.

That's really a shame that people would treat your Muslim friend and family like that. People can be so damn hypocritical. People say 'we are Americans, we are proud Americans', and then ostracize whole groups of people and ethnicities because the others aren't like them or 'different' in some way. They make me sick

 

[Dan Murphy]

I was home with my mom, who was recovering from her first cancer surgery, and my youngest niece who I watched during the day. We had cartoons on the TV for her. My sister called from work and said to put on CNN because a 'small plane' had hit the World Trade Center. We quickly switched over and the first tower was burning. Everybody I know thought it was just a terrible accident, that a Cessna or something hit the tower. Then the second plane hit on live TV and we could see that it was a commercial airplane. My mother said to me, "wow, the radar must be messed up that planes are hitting buildings." My mom was not a dumb person, she just couldn't fathom that it was on purpose. I said," we're under attack." I had to repeat myself a couple of times before she got it.

Then we got the report that a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania, and another one had hit the Pentagon. We were terribly scared by this time. I lived in Philadelphia, and I recall a real fear that maybe one of our historical sites could be a target. Everything in the city went into lockdown. The buses stopped and my sister (who at that time worked near Independence Hall) was let out of work and had to begin the walk home-but before she left she called me crying that school had called and they had dismissed my niece and nephew without warning. I quickly threw my shoes on and ran to the school, but couldn't find them. I then ran to my sister's house a few blocks away and they were sitting on the front steps crying. I took them to my house.

We watched TV for hours, days. The night of 9/11 I had to go to the supermarket to food shop. Instead of the usual upbeat music, they had the news radio playing over the loudspeaker. Nobody said a word that I remember, except in hushed tones, like we were all at a funeral. On 9/12 I went to the party supply store and bought a small American flag, which I taped to our outside railing. It's the only time I've ever displayed a flag, and it stayed up for a long time.

I watched TV day and night for weeks. I think I damaged my psyche very badly, because to this day I cannot watch any documentaries about that day. I just can't. My sister and her husband visited the 9/11 museum at Ground Zero on a trip to New York last year. I couldn't do that.

In 1998 I visited New York with some friends, and we went to the Twin Towers and took the tour. It was a five minute elevator ride to reach the top observation deck. I loved that tour, and remembered it on that terrible day just a few years later. I wondered if the lady who rang me up in the souvenir shop up there had been working on 9/11 and was now dead. For me, this nameless woman who had exchanged a few cheery words with me became the symbol of all who had lost their lives. When I got home from that 1998 trip, I found the ticket stub from the tour in my coat pocket and absently put it in my sewing kit as a small memento. It is still there.

I've read all the stories here in this thread, but for some reason, BSH this one made me misty eyed while reading it yesterday, 22 years later.

 

[jimmymc]

I had just started in a new elementary school in New Jersey when it happened, so that was a wild experience. About half the class was pulled out of school by their parents, then after lunch we were pulled into the gym and they told us what happened. No videos, just our principal talking about it.

Then 10 days later, my dad and I went to the Mets vs Braves game at Shea, and that was one of those nights you never forget. I was seven at the time and still remember it clearly.

 

[sasywtch]

I was working on Tinker AFB at the time but was home getting ready. A friend who was in the AF as a radar tech called me, he was upset, wanting to go pick up his son from school. Driving in to work, the lines were 2 hours long. They were checking under the hood, in the trunk, under the car and you had to get out to open them yourself. When I got in, everything was locked down. We could not go outside. I remember there were tanks and humvees driving around with machine guns on top. I swear the guys with those guns looked like they were 15. I remember while sitting in line, I could see all the awac (planes with the huge radar disc on top) sitting out ready to go as Tinker was the home base for them at the time (don't know if they still are) and the Navy fighter jets taking off as the dust was flying into our cars.

 

[pindecisive]

I was in high school in San Jose, CA and lived 10 minutes away from the SJC airport in Silicon Valley.

My dad was in Boise, ID for the week and I was alone at home. He called me just as I was leaving to go to school and told me to turn on the tv. I think it took him about a week to get back home.

I'd flown the year before by myself to Vegas and remember being annoyed that my cousin didn't walk over to meet me at the gate when I deplaned. Seems so strange to me now that someone could just walk up to an airport gate.