Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's hard to believe its been 6 years already. Sometimes it still feels like yesterday. Some people just brush off the date now, but I'm not one of them. Whehter we acknolwedge it or not, six years ago today, the world became a different place. Next weekend, I'm going to western Maryland with some family and friends and we will probably take a detour into Pennsylvania to see the Flight 93 memorial. On a side note, its surprising how difficult it is to buy an American flag right now. I work at CVS as a pharmacy tech as I'm applying to pharmacy and dental school and they tell me they don't sell those flags like they used to. There's a Wal-Mart 7 miles away...I'll try going there, if you can't find a flag at Wal-Mart then we're seriously screwed.
I think its just some time for some personal honest reflection on how I've changed positively, and perhaps negatively. I just felt this forum was a good place to it cause its so commonly read. When the attacks happened, I was in 11th grade in high school in one of Washington, D.C.'s Maryland suburbs, a rich snobby place where everybody was self-absorbed. Nobody thought about the world outside our town...nothing mattered beyond the mall or the swimming pool or ice rink. The outside world for most people meant baseball games and concerts in DC and Baltimore, or vacations to Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico or Europe. The moment I heard the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were hit, I thought it was a joke or a rumor. It felt like some disaster movie.
I still can't believe watching the smoke rising from the towers. It was just so surreal. My first reaction was sadness as I watched George Bush give his first speech since the attacks. I didn't particularly like him in the beginning but at that moment I felt a high level of bonding with him. NO matter whether we agreed with the Florida election or not, he was our President, he was one of us, our people. The next thing I felt was rage. At the terrorists, our enemies abroad at people who even the next day talked about peace and reconciliation and negotiating. I was also ashamed for not being American enough. My parents are immigrants from Taiwan, and though I was born in the U.S. 9-11 more than anything made me feel like an outsider.
Even though I was very Americanized culturally and identified a lot more with the U.S. compared with Taiwan or Asia, I still felt different and ashamed. My parents never wanted me identifying completely at American only (try finding a lot of first generation immigrants who really completely sever ties to the old country) but after 9-11 they understood my complete identification with the U.S. I don't want to sound like rejecting my heritage and I do take pride in it, but in the post-9-11 world its hard. I feel like as a minority, I have to carry the baggage of not just the 9-11 tragedy, but of illegal immigrants, gang members, and drug traffickers.
Besides patriotism, a lot of things have changed for me too. I've always thought I was a tolerant person, but I'm ashamed to say it was put to the test in the months after the tragedy. Some Pakistani kids in my neighborhood talked trash about the U.S. during the Afghanistan war and insulted me because I wrote something in my high school newspaper supporting the troops, saying because I'm Asian I'm not really an American and shouldn't be loyal to the U.S. We got a fight that involved my cousins and their friends. Blood was drawn on both sides and I had a seriously black eye and several cuts and our parents had to pull us apart with the Middle Easterners' parents threatening to call the police. I was made to apologize to them because I threw the first punch. I'm still angry about this to this day. I've said a lot of things I shouldn't have, like how all Muslims should be deported from our country and I blamed my parents for not being loyal enough to America. In college though I've made some very good friends who are of Middle Eastern descent who are very Americanized and do not support terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism or anti-Semitism.
This neighborhood fight hurt my relations with my mom and my aunt. Two years I got in a big argument with my mom that I'll always regret. She said that it was okay for my university to hold a ACC football game despite it being Sept 11. I was angry and called her a foreigner and accused her of not loving the U.S. because she was a liberal who voted for Al Gore and still has divided loyalties between the U.S. and Taiwan. I didn't call my family for a month. We've since made up. My parents have had to accept that my values are different and my beliefs are different and they've learned to respect that. My mom will vote for Hillary Clinton, who I think is a snivelling illegal loving liberal b___ and I will vote for either Rudy GIuliani or Fred Thompson but we respect one another's choices now.
There are some more tangible changes though besides turning me from politically moderate or apathetic to a conservative Republican and making me a flag-waving patriot. Perhaps the most visible part, the part that always makes me 9-11, weirdly when I'm meeting new people and they ask me about my musical tastes. September 11th was the reason I became a country music fan and right now 85% of the music I listen to comes from Nashville.
In the months after 9-11, I came across songs by Alan Jackson, Darryl Worley, and Toby Keith when my uncle was putting on the country station. Despite some members of my family being country fans (from their days in the SOuth and Middle America) I never really got into it. I listenened mostly to classical and pop. Those songs spoke to me in a way that music never has before. Other genres were all about making peace, being hippies, smoking weed and pimping hoes or hating on the government. I listened to the country station more and more wanting to hear those songs again, and started falling in love with everything else they played too. Also, as someone with immigrant parents, listening to country music made me feel more American since country music is often seen as the music of America, or the soundtrack of the heartland, the land of small towns and farms where most ordinary Americans live, the music most Americans listen to, unlike the coastal fringe where I spent most of my life.
My love of country music and the imagery and messages from those songs reflected something deeper about me. 9-11 made me more inward looking. Before, like many young people I was fascinated by the world out there. I wondered about Italy or Mexico or Jamaica or adventures in exotic places. Now when I think of adventure, I think about how there's a whole country out there I haven't truly seen yet, away from the coastal fringe of Maryland and the Northeast or the tourist spots sprinked across the American landscape. I've realized that despite being born here, I still don't understand the real world of typical America.
Now my dream adventure would be crisscrossing America on small roads, away from the Interstates, walking along small town Main Streets, driving on two-lane country roads and eating apple pie in little family-owned diners. I still wonder what my life would be like if I had grown up somewhere else, in a little town with waving American flags, front porches, sweet tea and lemonade stands. On the other hand, listening to country music made me feel somewhat less American too. Like I couldn't identify with some of the things they sang about, things that would be familar to the majority of Americans.
I used to want to see Acapulco and Venice. Now I want to experience places like Omaha, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Lake Tahoe, the Colorado Rockies, Alaska. I just want to spend a week in Des Moines or Sioux Falls getting in touch with the real America. Since 9-11 I've begun to feel that us in the coastal areas have lost our way. And the hope for our country lies there in the heartland and down South where old-fashioned American values still thrive. One reason I dislike the Northeast and California (evident from a lot of my posts here) is because I sense that they sympathize with our country's enemies and don't care about America or patriotism. 9-11 has made me definitely turn inward, looking further into America for comfort and reassurance rather than at the world outside.
I know some things will never be the same again. For better or worse, I look at the world beyond the U.S. with fear and distrust. Its impossible not to after September 11th. As a kid I would go to the beach and look at those ships on the horizon and wonder where they were going, where they came from. NOw I see those ships and I wonder what's in there. A suitcase nuke? Illegal immigrants? Drugs? September 11th has made me understand that our country is under siege and I'm more ready now to take a stand whether its against the terrorists still trying to attack us or illegal immigrants or rogue nations with nuclear weapons.
I hate the terrorists for murdering 3000 of my fellow Americans, destroying so many families, taking away mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and friends. But perhaps I can't hate them for taking away our innocence. But our country has been under attack from foreigners, illegal immigrants, dictators and enemies aroudn the world. Maybe we haven't been innocent, we were just ignorant and naive. 9-11 woke us up as a nation. I just hope we don't fall back asleep again after a few years.
Last edited by Tom Lennox 70; 09-11-2007 at 01:23 PM..
Thank you for a very thoughtful post! And I'm with you on the Country Music. Have always appreciated it, but the work of such guys as Toby Keith literally give me goosebumps, and make you really think about things.
Terrapin2212 - what a wonderful post. Alot of the things you said are exactly the way I feel and think. I'm speechless right now, I don't even think I can add anything to that - wonderful, wonderful post.
Thank you for a very thoughtful post! And I'm with you on the Country Music. Have always appreciated it, but the work of such guys as Toby Keith literally give me goosebumps, and make you really think about things.
Awesome post- well written from the heart. I could not stop reading it.
thanks for sharing your thoughts....
here's a hug & some points. from your friend in NJ
Yeah that's certainly true. Country music really reflects the mood of the nation especially in times like this...anger, grief, the whole spectrum. I especially liked Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning" and "have You Forgotten" by Darryl Worley.
More recently, Worley's "I Just Got Back From a War" and SHeDAISY's "Come Home Soon" really drives the point home about the sacrificies our men and women in uniform plus their families back home are making to defend our freedom and our way of life.
God bless America
Support Our Troops
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
great post!!
for Terrapin2212
from your friend in NJ
