You know, the one very strange thing

that I've been thinking about on the 17th anniversary

of 9-11, as a parent of young children,

the thing that comes to mind is that my kids

will grow up seeing 9-11 as this kind of

event from the ancient past, right?

Something from something from which they are detached.

Kind of like how I saw when I was a kid growing up,

I remember when I learned about the Vietnam War

or the Cold War, the JFK assassination,

when I was a kid, all those events were relatively recent

to me, you know, they happened not long before my birth

and my parents remembered them and told me about them,

but still it just felt like something ancient.

And that's how things that happened before you were born,

I guess always feel.

At least in modern society, that's how they feel.

I think maybe back in the old days,

people felt more connected to the past,

even the past that things happened before they were born.

But in this modern day and age, when news moves so quickly

and I don't know, we're just so immersed

...