911 9/11 911

911. This sequence of numbers could be for 9 1 1 the police, 9 1 1 the hospital, or 9 1 1 the fire station. But just put a single slash, a little diagonal line in the sequence and our minds are jolted with imagery and memories of all the possible 911s combined. 9/11. One day, four planes, and hundreds of deaths are all part of that number. 9/11.
Even speaking or writing the date is questionable in some situations. Personally, I do not know anyone who did not get to say goodbye to someone that day, but I am from a farming community in Central Wisconsin. Here at UW it is far more likely to be with people who have personal stories that include eye-witness accounts. So, if in conversation the topic is brought up, will someone’s eyes fill with tears as the sky filled with ash that day?
Entertainment, as raunchy as it tends to be, has not crossed that line of indecency. For instance, an episode of The Simpsons, in which the setting was the World Trade Center, is no longer aired out of respect and also awareness that audiences do not want to see those two towers in a comical situation. The movie industry waited several years to make a documentary on the events and I didn’t even watch a film that mentioned the incident until the 2007 production of Reign on Me. Earlier, Fahrenheit 911 had been released in 2004, but that was politically motivated to time with the presidential election that year, whereas Reign on Me was for entertainment purposes.
Our language has also been changed as a result of 9/11. “Terrorism” was not a common word in 2000, as least not for us Westerners. In my part of the Midwest the word didn’t really bear much meaning. It was just an adjective to describe something that didn’t happen ‘around here’. But now we all understand this word of hate. We were a united nation of anger and sadness. That unity of anger, though, is declining I must say. It has been used to pursue other interests, used as a veil. Now, I am not belittling the acts of terrorism, I am just saying that we as citizens have been led into war based on the acts of that tragic day and the feelings it created. But how far can these feelings take us?
Media has changed, language has changed, and the feeling of nationalism has changed, among many other things. As U.S. citizens we are far more conscience of the use of certain words like bomb, terrorist, and domestic attack. This unexpected tragedy happened and it changed all of us, not just those under the Stars and Stripes, but the entire developed world. And that change is going to continue until we have a reason to stop it. But that will never happen, for there will always be a new catastrophe, another dictator on the rise, a new crisis. We need to remember that day of sorrow and death and let it change us for the better.