Protection of the Innocent

It will always be a parent's first instinct to protect and shield their child from any type of danger. The attacks on September 11th, 2001 presented parents with the difficult decision of deciding how much information was safe for their child to absorb, if any at all. Harvey Wallbanger believes that our parents have taught us to ignore what is going on because many parents chose not to explain to their children the events that had occurred on that day. He said that, "...children learned all too well that avoidance and conscious suppression of memories is the way to handle traumatic situations." If as individuals we choose to ignore and suppress memories from events such as the ones of 9/11 then we acquired that mechanism of dealing with those kinds of things on our own. Our parents can only have so much influence on us. As we age we seem to grow out of what our parents taught us and we develop these types of things on our own.

Ten years ago, I was in third grade and had absolutely no care in the world. I remember exactly what happened the day our country was attacked by terrorist. I did not understand what was going on and my parents weren't much help. They chose to shelter me from the entire thing; they didn't even allow me to watch the news. Although I am angry that my parents hid such a thing from me, I can understand why they did it. As I got older I took it upon myself to find out as much as I could about what happened on that dreadful day because it's something that'll be in history books. Our parents have gone through tragedy close to this magnitude before; they lived through the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and The Challenger Explosion. They know how it feels to watch something awful happen to the country that we were taught as young children was unbreakable.

Throughout high school, it always mad me angry that when the anniversary of the attacks rolled around, we'd never really talk about it in class. When we asked our teachers why we didn't do this, they all gave us the same answer; it wasn't in the curriculum. My sophomore year, I insisted we talk about it and my teacher refused and continued to teach his lesson. A couple minutes later, I put my hand up and upon being called on I promptly asked my teacher where he was when the attacks happened. He stared at me for a couple seconds and then turned the projector off and told us exactly what he remembered from that day. He was in college; on his way to class when someone walked by him and told him classes were cancelled because something terrible had happened. He didn't find out what that terrible thing was until he got back to his apartment. Towards the end of class he asked us why we believed it was so important to talk about. We responded with the simple question of, "Why wouldn't it be?" We were in third grade but we remember that day just as much as everyone else does. We may not have