I'm going to tell you a story. It has countless authors, many points of view, a cast of characters too long to list here. It's about a day in September, a long time ago. Today is that day.
I don't remember much of it, unfortunately. I was so young. I had to have been in first grade at the time. I didn't know what was happening, and I'm sure none of the other children were aware either.
I was in school that morning. We were off in our own worlds, absorbing in information classrooms and playing at recess. Our parents and teachers, meanwhile, were on heightened alert. How were they going to break the news to us? How would we comprehend it? Were we safe in our neighborhoods? Were more attacks like this coming?
My mother and grandmother thought of picking me up early. A lot of parents probably did the same. The problem was that yanking us out would disturb us, freak us out. Looking at it one way, keeping us in school was the sensible path. For days, weeks, even months, I tried to decipher it. How could any little boy?
Years went by. I had developed something of an understanding about what had happened. Some things can never be fully understood. It's hard to believe that people can conceive something as horrible as this, plan it, and then execute it. They convinced themselves that they were the heroes of this story, waging a holy war against a decadent society. In their warped minds, they won. The fact is that they really didn't. They'll be forgotten.
The real heroes are those that risked or sacrificed their lives to save others that morning. We may not know them, but we sure as hell won't forget about them.
I know that I won't.
