I was nine. I live SO far away from anything that would ever be a terrorist target, and I was so young, so I didn't really feel an impact from it. I understood what happened, didn't understand why (though I don't even know if anybody does) and certainly didn't understand the mass grief. I knew people died, and people were injured, but they were ... it's so hard to describe. The death of a person didn't hold much weight with me, because it was a faceless nameless person. It didn't affect my daily life and I didn't lose anybody, I don't know anybody who lost anybody, etc. So it felt real in the sense that I knew what happened, but it didn't feel REAL the way it did to adults.

I also didn't grow up with a TV, so I didn't see the video of the towers falling over and over and over. We had a weekly newsletter for kids and I was bothered that it didn't cover the attacks until two weeks later. Obviously it couldn't cover it that week, but it didn't cover it the following week either.... Honestly they'd probably already gone to print so that they could get them shipped out and have them arrive on time, but I wouldn't have thought of that at the time. I kind of remember the photo that they used in the newsletter, of people running away from the towers. But by that point, two weeks later, I had heard so much news coverage that I couldn't really take the little newspaper (maybe a Scholastic production?) seriously. I don't feel that 9/11 affected me hugely, at least not directly. It hard a large effect on the greater world around me, and it certainly had a long-term effect, so it affected me indirectly, I guess. It didn't really change anything locally, except for politics. Nothing tangible.