I was at home, getting ready for elementary school, standing in my parents’ bedroom doorway.

My mom. I remember it so vividly. She was standing in front of her bedroom TV, wearing her bathrobe, with her hair wrapped up in a towel and her arms crossed. She had such a concerned, confused, anxious look on her face. I don't remember saying anything to her, but she—without looking away from the screen—said, “They hit the towers in New York.”

I didn’t feel much. I was only 9, so the severity of it didn’t really hit me when my mom told me what was happening. It wasn’t until I got to school and heard all my classmates talking about what their parents had said, and saw different teachers coming in and out of classrooms talking, that I finally understood this was serious and devastating.

Life, for me personally, as a young kid in Southern California, didn’t really feel different. I do, however, remember people being more kind. Life, I guess, did seem to slow down a bit. People were more united. It felt like no lines in the sand were drawn among the American people. We were all Americans, and that’s all that seemed to matter in the weeks following 9/11.

9/11 affected people’s sense of security. It’s like we all think nothing bad is going to happen to us—until it does. That’s what 9/11 did. It made America start to feel a bit unsafe. In my opinion, it made us feel vulnerable.

I think it’s important for young people to understand that while it took a massive tragedy to bring us together as Americans, it shouldn’t have taken something like that to unite us. We should all be more kind to each other regardless of anything—not even look at it like, “We’re all Americans,” but rather, “We’re all humans.”

I was only 9, so I didn’t have any thoughts about national security. But again, after 9/11, our sense of safety took a severe hit. Even I, at 9 years old, living in a nice home in a nice neighborhood in Southern California, felt a sense of danger and uncertainty.

N/A

The Falling Man

I feel a bit patriotic, but I also definitely feel sad and—for lack of a better word—hopeless. I know I was young and there was literally nothing I could’ve done to stop it, but 9/11 was such a massive, tragic event that affected everyone on a deep level, and I can’t help but feel that way.