I suppose that every generation has an event that is cemented in the collective conscious memory. Ask anyone old enough and they’ll tell you minute details about where they were when they heard the news about the President Kennedy’s assassination. A generation later would remember the Challenger disaster. My generation remembers the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.
Watching the second plane hit the tower. Seeing desperate people jump to a preferred death to escape death. Watching the towers fall almost in slow motion. These are vivid images that you and I cannot escape. The memory is so vivid that I call smell the English classroom where I was sitting. What is it about tragedy that makes the memory so poignant? Your memories testify with mine, and are intensified.
September 11th is one of those events that would be horrifying to forget, but is agonizing to recall. Maybe that’s why we tend to describe where we were and what we were doing at the time, instead of the sickening helpless feeling we felt watching thousands of people die.
“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.” -J.R.R. Tolkien.
Oh I wish that I could remember pleasant times as vividly as I could remember the tragic times.
Mostly From Memory 