Extremely Confused and Incredibly Far Away

I do not remember 9/11/01 very well with the exception of the first couple hours of my day. I was curling my hair, getting ready for another day of 8th grade. My mother came downstairs and told me to come up to her room and watch the news with her. She told me the World Trade Center got hit by an airplane. I had no idea what the World Trade Center was, where it was, or why this was really such an incredible event. The only thing I remember was being worried about the plane crash. I wanted to be a pilot, and it worried me to hear about crashes. However, my mother had a hint of emergency in her voice and I could tell something was off about this. I went with her to her room, my dad was out of town on business and I guess my little sister was probably still sleeping. I looked up at the television, and saw the images which have now been burned into every American's memory. First, it was only the one tower smoking, then they showed another plane flying into the second, the first collapsing, the people on the streets of New York crying. Also, they showed clips of the Pentagon. Before that moment, airplanes flying into skyscrapers was something I never even bothered to imagine. Watching this occur was like watching someone do something grotesque or abnormal. I don't think I ate breakfast, I had to hurry up and catch the schoolbus. At the bus stop, we discussed this situation like we knew anything about the world besides suburban America. We weren't aware of any enemies, and I had never heard the word "terrorist" actually used to describe anyone, a word I could have frankly done without. At school, the news was on all day in every classroom. The teachers started giving us more insight as to the potential attackers, and we saw the footage of the plane that crashed in the field not far from my hometown in PA. At this time I lived in WA, though, so I was much further from the event. That's about all I remember about the actual day. The whole week after 9/11, my Arab friends were kept home from school by their mother, who feared they'd be attacked. They did suffer much discrimination and humiliation at school that year. I remember I still didn't understand why, because they were Americans like the rest of us. I remember the American flags being sold out at every store, and feeling ashamed of our patriotism. I don't know why, but I never really liked it when people displayed American flags or when we had to say the pledge of allegiance. I can't explain why. Anyway, then Bush announced we were going to war, and I began to watch the news every night. I was very afraid, for the world I had always known was the world of Internet, Clinton, glitter, TLC, and Baby Spice....never war. I was pretty angry. My family and I moved back to the east coast, and I met people who were actually affected by 9/11. Their brothers/in-laws/uncles/cousins had died in the towers. The schools began to teach students about the Middle East and Islam so they could understand an entire race, religion and region of the world was not responsible for this, but rather a select few extremists. Anyway, that's about all I have to say about 9/11. I'm actually really sick of hearing about it. I was sort of disappointed to hear this novel was about it, but it's turned out to be really disconnected from world affairs and mostly about the relationships between people, so I'm content for now.