Never Forget

From about 5th to 8th grade, or age 10-14, my parents decided to get rid of our television. Well, not television (it still sat at the focal point of the living room, staring me down), but any and every channel available. Because television and visual entertainment are so valued in our culture, especially during pre-teen years, I felt like I was being kept from enjoying what I had the right to. I felt like an outcast (although now I realize that's ridiculous) in the sea of my Disney, MTV, and VH1 crazed peers. This had a huge impact on my experience with the media. For five years of my life I wasn't subjected to the mind games of mass marketing and advertisements. I was seeing much less than 3,000 commercials a day. However, I also missed out on important news coverage I wouldn't be able to experience in the same way through an alternative medium.

The photo above was taken by my father of my mother, older sister, and I enjoying a book. This was the kind of behavior my mother hoped would stem from getting rid of television programming ten years later.

After the recent 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, I was of course forced to reflect on where and what I was doing when I first heard of the attack. I was sitting with my fellow 6th graders, learning the alphabet in Japanese class. We'd repeat ways to remember what the hiragana character looked like over and over. “A is for apple. I is for eel. U is for 'uooop'. O is for ostrich...,” until suddenly the vice principal pulled Kobayashi Sensei out of the classroom. We didn't think anything of it and immediately turned to our friends and started giggling about the opposite sex (because that's what you giggle about when you're in 6^th grade). Our teacher returned to the classroom and attempted to explain to us what had happened in his thick accent, but I know none of us could grasp the intensity and seriousness of the terrorist events.

After hearing the news, most adults and students alike, returned home to see the extent of the plane crashes with their own eyes. They sat in front of the TV for hours, watching live broadcasts, visual, and audio recordings of the overwhelming fear in New York City. I however, returned home as usual and talked about it with my family. Web 1.0 wasn't technologically advanced enough to provide streaming video, like Web 2.0 is today. I would have to wait until the newspaper was published the next morning and delivered to my doorstep to read a somewhat significant amount of text and see a few epic photos explaining what had happened. The youtube video above is an example of a television program someone may have seen during the following week.

I remember having one nightmare after September 11^th. But, other than this subconscious experience, I wasn't severely impacted by the attacks. Although the stories were scary, I didn't have the same emotional overload from reading the newspaper articles as one would have from a brain attempting to process 30 frames per second. Although a picture is worth a thousand words, re-runs of the Twin Towers falling are worth much more. Hearing a newly widowed woman sobbing is without a doubt much more powerful than anything you'd be able to get out of a text.

My 9/11 experience was much different than the average American's. I still haven't seen more than a minute or so of footage to this day. I can't decide whether I'm happy that as an 11 year old I wasn't subject to horrifying, sanity altering images, or like I missed a huge part of American History, in a way. Would my view of the 9/11 terrorist attacks be different today if my parents hadn't chosen to end our TV programming? Should I consider whether or not I'll let my children watch television when I become a parent? Is it true that in some cases what people don't know (or in this case see) won't hurt them?

The photo above is an example of one that may have been seen in a newspaper delivered on September 12th, 2011. Retrieved from http://1951club.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/september-9th-2001-september-9th-2011/