Today is the two year anniversarry of 9/11. This made me think about where I was when I found out about the World Trade Centre, and consequentially flasbulb memories.
Flashbulb memories are cool. Basically it's when everyone remembers vividly where they were at a certain time. E.g. 9/11, JFK's assassination. A lot of these memories are accurate, but sometimes people tell them again and again and change them subtley each time until they believe something totally different to what really happened. Here's some reading I found through google, and a farside cartoon about them.
So, when I found out about 9/11 I had made it all the way to work without knowing. My flatmate had got a phone call at 6am, and had been watching TV with the lounge door closed all morning. I started work at 11am, and didn't try to enter the lounge. My workmate told me about ten minutes after I started and I didn't believe her just at first.
I had never heard of the World Trade Centre before that day, although that's nothing amazing as I know bugger all about geography. We spent the day at work checking the BBC website and mumbling how awful it was to the customers.
I remember how everyone I met that day was very sad.
So that's my flashbulb, I can remember finding out that Princess Di was dead too, I wrote a sonnet about it. Mostly about how I didn't really care...
epililogue:
In the February of the following year I was doing a 'welcome to the library' class visit. We have to cover emergency procedures, so I did what to do in a fire and an earthquake. This little girl sitting up the front put her hand up and said "what should we do in a terrorist attack?"
I said there wasn't a very high chance of Karori library being targeted and moved on. I've laughed about it since, but it's a little scary that little girls are worried about it in suburban Wellington.