“It’s just that everything was incredibly far away from me.”

We spent part of this morning watching old videos from 9/11 online. I can't believe it's been 10 years.

I was a sophomore in high school when it happened. Normally we wouldn't have had the TV on while I was getting ready for school, but one of my parents was having some minor medical procedure that day, so my dad hadn't gone to work and was watching the news in bed.

I remember being very confused about what was going on - all we knew was that a building in New York was burning - the World Trade Center, where we'd been just a couple of months before when we visited my brother, who lived about an hour away from the city. As we watched, the second plane crashed. It was crazy. Looking back, I can't believe I went to school after that, or that my parents went ahead and went to the doctor.

I remember that all day at school there was a division between teachers who let us watch the news all through class and teachers who thought we should keep our minds off it and work. I remember sitting with a group of relatively new friends and lunch and talking about what had happened and how we were supposed to feel. I remember that my brother knew several people who worked in the city or at the Trade Center. I think all of them were okay.

I remember that my mom had a new sweatshirt she'd just bought on our trip to New York. It had an outline of the skyline, including the twin towers. She had a hard time ever wearing it after that.

It's strange to think about that day now that it's colored by everything that came after - wars and airport security and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (an awesome book about a little boy whose father dies in the towers - the quote in the title comes from that). All I knew that day was that it would be something I would remember forever - the way my parents remember the moonwalk or the Kennedy assassination. There are some things that you just can't believe when they're happening, and then you never, ever forget.

The strangest thing that happened today was that a 12 year old boy asked me if I'd seen the news - all of the old 9/11 footage. I don't think he'd ever seen it before, and he was fascinated, because when it happened, he was 2.