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Totally unrelated, but I still remember what I did on 9/11. I was in my teens. I know the date, I know the weekday, I know everything I did in the 24 hours it h

Totally unrelated, but I still remember what I did on 9/11. I was in my teens. I know the date, I know the weekday, I know everything I did in the 24 hours it happened. However, despite being the much "fresher" events, I don't know the weekday my grandparents and parents passed away, let alone what I did back then. My memory is... interesting.

macintux 5y ago
Memory in general is very capricious, but world-changing, emotional events tend to do that. Before 9/11 the most common one I heard people talking about was JFK's assassination. For me, it's the Challenger disaster, 9/11, Columbia.
- MrGilbert 5y ago
  Yes.. Thinking about it, before 9/11 I had the TV pictures of the Berlin Wall being torn down by an excavator in my mind. But I was way too young at this age to understand it.
conductr 5y ago
I'm a bit older and have experienced a handful of 9/11-like events [0]. They always stand out more vividly as a shared global/national experience whereas things like family members passing is highly localized to your family. You could easily escape the mourning by talking to friends/coworkers/etc that had no idea your family member passed and the conversation would give you a sense of normalcy. During/following 9/11, there was nobody to talk to that wasn't thinking about the events that just occurred. It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time. [0] Challenger, OKC, 9/11, even the first WTC attacks and princess Diana & OJ fit this category in terms of memory imprinting. I'm too young for JFK, but that was a big one too. My uncle says he can remember everyone being very sad and glued to the TV, he was 3.
- MrGilbert 5y ago
  Yeah... Thinking about it, I remember my mum watching the funeral for Lady Diana back in 1997. > It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time. Now I'm European, and I remember that our teachers back in school spend the whole day explaining what happened, and maybe why. (It was late afternoon here, when the attacks started, so I'm talking about the next day). But everyone was in disbelief, and also afraid of the response.

macintux 5y ago

Memory in general is very capricious, but world-changing, emotional events tend to do that. Before 9/11 the most common one I heard people talking about was JFK's assassination. For me, it's the Challenger disaster, 9/11, Columbia.

MrGilbert 5y ago
Yes.. Thinking about it, before 9/11 I had the TV pictures of the Berlin Wall being torn down by an excavator in my mind. But I was way too young at this age to understand it.

conductr 5y ago

I'm a bit older and have experienced a handful of 9/11-like events [0]. They always stand out more vividly as a shared global/national experience whereas things like family members passing is highly localized to your family. You could easily escape the mourning by talking to friends/coworkers/etc that had no idea your family member passed and the conversation would give you a sense of normalcy. During/following 9/11, there was nobody to talk to that wasn't thinking about the events that just occurred. It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time. [0] Challenger, OKC, 9/11, even the first WTC attacks and princess Diana & OJ fit this category in terms of memory imprinting. I'm too young for JFK, but that was a big one too. My uncle says he can remember everyone being very sad and glued to the TV, he was 3.

MrGilbert 5y ago
Yeah... Thinking about it, I remember my mum watching the funeral for Lady Diana back in 1997. > It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time. Now I'm European, and I remember that our teachers back in school spend the whole day explaining what happened, and maybe why. (It was late afternoon here, when the attacks started, so I'm talking about the next day). But everyone was in disbelief, and also afraid of the response.