I was around 12 when 9/11 happened.
My mom was a Kindergarden teacher at my elementary school at the time. So, while my friends were leaving school early, my brothers and I stayed in my mom’s empty classroom, while the other teachers were ushering students to be picked up. There were two computers in my mom’s classroom and all I can remember from that afternoon was two things: chaos, and streaming “live” video over the web for the first time.
Later, when we left school, piling into my mom’s min-van, I remember feeling very scared, confused and worried things would never be the same. I was concerned I would never be the same. But still confused. How could this happen? Why would someone do such a thing?
I’m not trying to be hyperbolic, but there was so much we didn’t know yet. No one wanted to say anything, or jump to any conclusions because it was such a haunting disaster of such gigantic magnitude. A horror unfathomable. It was truly a loss of innocence for all of America. My parents would disbar my brother and I from watching cable news temporarily and didn’t want to engage our innocent questions about the attack for a long time.
I mean, shit. There’s still so much we don’t know. There’s so much pain pouring over to this day.
Nearly two decades later, I’m a pretty atypical John Gruber fan-boy, but his podcast has an old episode with special guest Jason Kottke. Usually, his podcasts align on tech subjects such as Apple (like his website Daring Fireball). But this particular episode focuses on the web and his guest, Kottke. They have a (roughly) 20-minute conversation about 9/11, blogs, CNN’s servers melting that day, and suicide. It’s a fantastic episode, that in true Daring Fireball fashion, spans many subjects, has crossovers and chats about friends of the web. 9/11 can be an emotionally taxing event to discuss, and dissect — but, John and Jason have a thoughtful time that is lighthearted and kind but really is just worth checking out.