11, 2001 attacks occurred? It’s the natural starting point for any conversation about 9/11. Most Americans born, say, before 1997 have clear answers to the question: Do you remember where you were when the Sept. Flashbulb memories are less about experiencing an event and more about the perception of it - remembering who told you, where you were, and what you were doing when you heard the news. Very few people saw the attacks in person, survived the collapse of the World Trade Center, or lost a loved one on the hijacked plane.
Flashbulb memories are distinct from standard memories of historic events or personal experiences of trauma, in part because flashbulb memories aren’t necessarily concerned with memory of the event itself. The attacks of 9/11 are perhaps the most salient example of a flashbulb memory - an exceptionally vivid “snapshot” of the moments and circumstances in which a piece of shocking, consequential news is heard. Yet, at some level, I must have known this memory was important enough to keep. As a child, I couldn’t possibly have comprehended how this morning in my neighbor’s kitchen would fundamentally change the shape of the modern world and America’s behavior within it. It seems odd that I still remember these inconsequential details, yet I have no recollection of anything that followed. “I think you should go home,” she says in my recollection, with the kind of understated gravity usually reserved for the movies. The teacup clinks against its ceramic saucer, some of the tea spilling over the sides like the early tremors of an earthquake. My neighbor Dorothy watches with wide eyes, her hands quivering around her cup of tea. There’s not much I remember about that day, except a flash - I’m in my elderly neighbors’ kitchen in northern Wisconsin, sun washing through the windows, when a breaking news alert comes across the screen of the tiny cube television. I was a freshly minted four-year-old on the morning of September 11, 2001.
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