What did 9/11 do to you kids? (Read beyond thread title and relate to the OP or so help me)

[Jark212]

I was in 4th or 5th grade, my mom woke my up and I saw the airplane his the second tower live. When I went to school all the other kids were scared, and all the adults paranoid. As far as we were concerned we lived in L.A. at the time so it might as well been on the other side of the world...

 

[Devil's Due]

(removed by the National Security Agency)

 

[The Lost Big Boss]

Fear. Fear spreading in the air like a wild fire.

Wall of text

Spoiler

Now I was in the second grade so I knew fuck all when this shit was going down. I was walking home and I noticed no one was outside, I was talking to my best friend and asked if she could come over my house, her mom was in shock for reasons I now understand, but at the time I thought she was just being a grumpy *****. Went into my house and my mom was silent, walked into the living room and she told me that the twin towers fell. Now I wasn't retarded, I knew that was something big and it is no longer.

It wasn't till the third grade that the fear started to settle in. We were going to invade Iraq and all of this WMD talk scared the shit out of me. Small nukes, dirty bombs, airplanes blowing up in the sky. Terror alerts being raised for no reason other than "Just cause". When you pump that amount of fear 24/7 into a ten year old that can't make an opinion and can't really think things through your scare the shit out of him.

Every Christmas it was "Terror alert red!!!". To this day I have no idea why they would do that. Why? What the hell am I looking for? What should I be looking out for? Do wan't me to report any one who might look like a terrorist?

And trust me, it wasn't till I hit middle school that all of this bullshit filtered into my brain and I was able to call it just that, bullshit. I would visit my grandparents in Florida every February vacation, and every time I was scared shit less of that dude who looked like a Muslim four rows in front of me.

Fear works, and it will always work. You can do anything to people if they are in fear and unable to get the proper information. If one can restrict that, then they can do almost anything. To this day we have Fox news screaming about Iran and the nuclear crisis. North Korea and it's nuclear missile program (witch consists of a rocket attached to an air pump. So if anything came out of 9/11 and 7/7, it was a new age of fear.

 

[InnerRebellion]

I was a wee little boy in kindergarten. All I knew was a few planes had crashed because "some bad people" took them over "to cause trouble" (I'm using the words the principal did) and we were locked in our classrooms and the school was guarded by the police...(back then, the superintendent was a paranoid fool) and we weren't allowed to talk. Now, I'm in my freshmen year, and quite a few of the criminals in the class say seeing the 9/11 attack makes them see life as useless and expendable.

 

[ShrooM_DoughKiD]

Typical morning for a 5th grader, wake up, coffee and go to watch cartoons but I can't because every channel is flooded by 11/9 stuff.. I really didn't know what it was at the time, but all i could think about was 'what the hell happens in DBZ today'

It hasn't really affected me, its given me some good conversation starters though.

 

[Darius Brogan]

Not only was I 9 at the time and more concerned with sleeping lots than death, but (1)I live in Canada. and (2) I'm a firm believer that the 9/11 thing was rigged, so... growing up around the fear it caused didn't affect me a whole lot.

 

[Trebort]

The only thing 9/11 has done for me is annoy me. (I'm sorry if this is offensive to you, but on a pro-american forum, I'm bound to be suspended for this post)

The American government took down a couple of skyscrapers as a plot to invade the middle east and secure oil supplies because as a country it's totally renewable-energy-retarded. Watch, they will invade the UK next to get at our bazillion gallons of oil we have under the Falklands.

So I was a kid when 9/11 went down (no pun intended), I stayed up all night watching it on the news, totally fascinated. That was the first time I've ever seen a world leader declare war in my life. Anywho, it's done nothing but bug me since then to be frank. Every year, boo hoo, even British news channels are clogged full of the 9/11 hype. I bet the majority of Americans could not name the date London was bombed by islamic extremists. To be frank again, it's time to put it behind you and move on.

Perhaps you could mourn the date of the oil spill and contemplate your countries vile greed for black goo when the sun is capable of fueling your nation, but you just won't because too many people get rich from Oil.

(I seem to have spent that entire post ranting about Oil! ^_^ Not my intention, but hey. Please don't be offended. I seem to be on probation for dissing Israel, I'd not survive being accused of dissing American too)

 

[Kurokami]

Snoopied.

Everyone constantly talked about the economy's downfall, and it didn't reach me at all, nothing seemed to have changed except for people constantly fearing it.

9/11, apart from being a tragedy was also an interesting time, it was a message to America that it is not untouchable and the rest of the world saw America, the powerful giant that it is, being hit in its own land. I remember my father told us, somewhat awestruck.

Not that I'm unsympathetic for the people who lost their lives, nor do I think its good to have happened, but it was definitely a powerful event for me.

 

[martin's a madman]

well, as somebody about 5 years younger then you i'll tell you this much, i was very much against the war. The only thing 9/11 did for me was activate my political senses. As for why everything is so unrelateable, i cannot say, apart from the fact that our culture has developed faster as we've had the luxury of maturing in the internet age. Information and cultural ideas spread farther and faster then ever, evolving and altering people's tastes.

also, as for the economy, we did just suffer under 8 years of george w.

The notion that 9/11 ruined everybody younger then you is just stupid. It really has very little to do with that incident itself, and more to do with the economic collapse and 9 years of war that followed. We are a generation spoiled by the internet, but poor in finances, and bathed in the blood of innocents, soldiers, and madmen.

There's been no bleeding from me sir.

 

[newfoundsky]

All I remember is that my mom got very VERY pissed that they made the whole class watch it on the news. She went to the office and raised hell until the superintendent called and apologized. It really didn't affect me much, though I was aware that the whole town (I live in the South) became a lot more "American" with flags popping up everywhere and this Muslim kid got beat up by some fifth graders.

But it never really changed ME.

 

[maninahat]

Well I live in the UK and was 6 at the time so it wouldn't have effected me.

BUT...

My mum worked for an airline and just flown over to New York at the time. She came on one of the first flights back with two USAF Jets at either side of the plane. They wern't there to protect it, But to shoot it down if ANYTHING went wrong. (luckily nothing did)

So I was affected just a bit.

It's why I never bother to discuss English politics anymore. No one gets really riled up about stuff in the UK these days. Last big argument we ever had was about fox hunting (where England said bye-bye to our collective sense of perspective).

 

[rowan-thats-me]

didn't really effect me in the UK, and compared to the middle east it didn't effect the US as much as some seem to think, nor did the London bombings, all they did was teach me us Brits handle a crisis better, as previously stated in this thread somewhere.

 

[RanD00M]

It had no effect on me,my family or anyone around me. I actually had a heartly laugh last year when they were holding a memorial for the 8th anniversary of the bombings. Why was I laughing? Because 8 is such a silly number. Why not have a memorial on the 10th anniversary?

 

[Drejer43]

hmm I remember around that time that I thought the world was cruel, and scary and that everything good about to happen for me is to good to be true. (that is changed today although sometimes I still got the attitude of everything good about to happen for me is to good to be true sometimes, not often) So no, it was just another bad event, besides I was like 7 or 6 it happened in a faraway nation and none of I knew, like a 6 year old cares about that.
My parents were a lot more terrified by it than me.

EDIT: I partly blame the media for my dark perception of the world since they only focus on bad things. Maybe that's why I got a brighter look on it today when I realized they do that.
Hmm maybe my dark view of the world was the reason that I got so much into gaming.

 

[Lonan]

I was a very young teen at the time. I remember thinking that people were overreacting. Nearly three thousand people? Yeah, that's bad, but it doesn't even make a blip in the numbers killed in actual disasters or comparable events.

Since then, it seems like even the smallest loss of life (a small handful of people) is suddenly reported as a massive tragedy. It's pathetic.

I've never been worried about terrorists. Reason being that they're ineffectual. They have very limited resources, limited numbers, and are based huge distances from their targets. They're not a serious threat at all with the current security in place.

That sounds quite right to me. 3000 people die every day from AIDS in Africa.

 

[Breaker deGodot]

No, I was only in first grade at the time. Bit too young for actual danger to register.

 

[Lavi]

I was in Grade 5.
I looked up at the TV in the classroom at 11:00 am.
I proceeded to not give a shit.

Honestly, kids don't care. They just wanna make it to lunch.

 

[Dyme]

I was 11 or so when that happened. I live in Germany.
I remember entering the living room, seeing my shocked father saying "there will be war" (turned out he was right), and while watching the towers collapse in the TV my shock turned to anger towards the German press because they already put Enya music behind the pictures. I mean I thought this was serious and they use the most clichéed music ever.