Five Years Ago...

Five years ago today, I was sitting at the controls of WWJD Eagle 91.7 FM, Alice Lloyd's college radio station. My friend Aaron Goff and I were hosting a morning show and just having a good time trying to entertain. At a little past 9 am, we get word that the World Trade Centers are on fire.

We start to watch the news. We see plane number 2 hit. We see the split screen where a plane has hit the Pentagon, but at first we thought it was just a different view of what is going on. The whole time we are so confused. What is going on? Then, the tower fell. Then the second. I knew that we were at war.

I was sad. I was confused. I was pissed off. I was running in circles wanting to help. What could I do? Drive to DC or NYC and just pitch in? Here is the greatest tragedy in American history and I am powerless to help.

There is rarely a day that goes by that I don't think about that day and the anger, rage, sadness, and fear I felt. Being a child of the 1980's, the movie Red Dawn kept playing in my head. I knew that if it came to that, I would definitely be a Wolverine. But, I was stuck in Kentucky powerless to do anything. All we could do was pray, talk to each other, and be scared, sad, and mad.

As did most Americans, we did what we could. There was no way I could drive my car 1,000 miles to NYC to help. Most likely, I would be sent home and be kicked out of school. So, I did, and continue to do so, what I can do to make sure that 9-11 isn't just a bump in American history.

Every year I watch a 9-11 Documentary and every year I will help spread the word and spread the reminder of what we lost that day. Sadly, more and more people are tuning out their initial response to 9-11. People are forgetting. They are ignoring. They are letting 9-11-01 drift into historic obscurity.

We cannot forget. There are still empty chairs at dinner. There are holes in family trees. There are broken hearts still healing. There is a gaping hole in the middle of Manhattan that resembles the hole in America. We cannot forget the true meaning of what happened 5 years ago. Remembering is the best way to prevent it from happening again.

People ask for a national day of rememberance, a day of no work and no school. I think that is stupid.

9-11 should be the one day where attendance is 100%. As a nation, we should simply show up. Go to work. Go to school. Do what you normally should be doing. Attendance has to be 100%. The reason 9-11 happened was a bunch of renegade animals who have corrupted a peaceful religion decided to interfere with America and our daily lives. They wanted to scare us into our homes and scare us from going through our normal routine. So, in response to that, we should, as one nation UNDER GOD, show up. And, in one voice, tell those scum that we will not surrender, we will now cower to their cowardly attacks. We are Americans, dammit, and there's not a damn thing you can do to stop us.