The common thing to do on anniversaries of tragic events is to recount one's own "What I Was Doing" story. My story for the OKC bombing isn't terribly riveting, but along with other events (Challenger, 9-11, etc) I'll always be able to recall it.
I was in speech class, drawing in the margins of my notebook. This was my second semester in college, and I was back in Lawton, OK.
No one came running in to break the news, so we didn't find out until after class was over. My first indication that something was wrong was the fact that all the TV's in the Student Union were tuned to CNN. Since then, I've always been slightly worried by televisions in public places - like the Breaking News jingle is going to chime in at any point with yet another disaster.
I remember friends of mine at the University of Oklahoma calling later that day and reporting that they had heard the explosion in Norman, which is a good distance away from where the Federal Building was. I don't know if they were exaggerating or not. That's the tricky thing about memory, particularly memories of big historical moments - they always seem more dramatic in retrospect than they might have been in real life.
I remember my Psych class that week pretty well, too. I remember being quietly annoyed while some of my classmates - you know the type - tried to wrap their pretty heads around the idea that there were people out there that believed in anything strongly enough to kill over. I imagine those same people were just as blindsided by 9-11. I'm sure some of them will still be asleep and thus will be shocked by the next 'how could this happen?' moment that comes along as well.
Another thing I remember is how the media, and the President, and certain people that almost certainly don't like me remembering today admonished the nation about how people needed to 'be careful what they said.'
Of course, such things said today constitute a "chilling effect on free speech", but we all know how black becomes white and up becomes down when the pachyderms run the White House. Or vice versa, but with donkeys.
But, ultimately, that's unimportant. What is important - today especially so - is to remember that in the present day War on Terror we're fighting terrorism isn't the enemy. It's merely the method. The enemy will have many faces, and some of them will inevitably be home grown.
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Part of what we fight is the fanatic's disease, the certainty that my way is the only right way, and any and all methods used to get my way are justified in the end. Like the sleepy students in that Psych 1013 class, we average citizens lack much in the way of conviction. And yet we must stay vigilant, lest we fall prey to the passionate intensity of the zealots around us.
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