Where were you when the world stopped turning?

In my little mind I know of two Americas. There is “Pre 9-11 America”. When terrorists hadn’t been a major thought since Pan Am Flight 103 Crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, December 21st. 1988. When “tornado” drills were a regular occurrence. For those who don’t remember or weren’t old enough to remember, Tornado drills were what they called it when your elementary school teacher would have you hide under a desk, against a wall. Head down, butt up, and you would use your hands to cover the back of your head. One day, only a year or two ago, I was soaking up a little History Channel and I saw kids doing one of these drills and I realized it wasn’t about tornados. These drills were fall-out and nuclear attack readiness drills. This was what we were to do if those “Commie Ruskies” ever made their move. Bear in mind I was in elementary school in the early 80’s. (Be nice, cracks about my age will make me cry) This was when the Russians were still the bad guy. Enter movies like Red Dawn (A movie my mother once called the “scariest movie” she’d ever seen). In those days and for a long time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the fear we had was mostly from conventional war. It was conventional, in that it was country vs. country; even if those countries used unconventional weapons.

Enter Osama, Yousef, and KSM. Suddenly we have a whole new America. One we call “Post 9-11”. In this new America the weapons are only somewhat conventional. The enemy however is anything but conventional. The enemy doesn’t attack our military infrastructure. Instead the enemy attacks our lives and our sense of well being, by attacking unarmed civilian non-combatants. In reality it wasn’t just a new America, but a new world followed. Suddenly the whole world found out how susceptible it was to a problem though of as primarily confined to Israel. We all saw the light. Some have put their blinders back on; some have chosen to create fantasies of conspiracy in the White House; but everyone, the complacent, the imaginative, and the vigilant alike remembers where they were and what they were doing.

I have heard people speak of how they remember exactly where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated. I understood the words but I didn’t realize the intensity of emotion that had to accompany such a vivid mental timestamp. My first experience with this was when the Challenger blew up. I remember it like it was yesterday, but I was too young to attach the emotion to the memory. After 9-11, I came to a new understanding of this memory & emotion phenomenon.

What about you? Where were you; what were you doing, when the world stopped turning? I want to know because your answers build a snapshot, a frozen moment in American time, when the whole world as we knew it changed forever.