In my town, the change was immediate and obvious. I lived next to a major military base. Everything was locked down. People I would have normally seen that day weren't allowed to come into town. I had two classes that day and I remember my art teacher walking in, writing on the board "Tell me how you feel and then you can go," and then sitting down with his head in his hands. Most of the class was missing. The rest of us drew or wrote or just left because we felt nothing.

The other class I was taking was Comparative Religion. We had been leading up to studying Judaism before 9/11, but we ended up spending the next month going round and round about Islam and extremists.

There were a couple of people from my town that died, either in the towers or on one of the planes. There were vigils. A local highway was renamed. And in the years that followed, people I went to school with went off to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm happy that I was aware of the differences though. I think as a child, I wouldn't have understood and that would have made me very afraid.