Reflection

Seven years ago I was a freshman at the University of Wyoming; it was my second week of school. I was eating breakfast at Washakie (I'm reasonably sure that I had, among other things, a bowl of yogurt) when I looked up at one of the televisions on the wall and saw the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center. I watched the towers fall, I understood that they'd fallen, but the full impact of the situation didn't sink in for a while. I was left with a kind of hollow feeling, a realization that something bad and world-changing had happened, but it felt so far away.

I went back to my dorm room and picked up my Bible (something I didn't do near enough before, and still don't do enough now). I was reading about how vengeance and justice are in God's hands when Dillon came up to my room and asked what I was doing. I read him the particular verse; he agreed that it was comforting, but his tone was too cheerful or naive or ignorant. He hadn't heard what had happened, so I told him what I'd seen.

Later that day on my way to class, there was a group of people outside the Engineering Building, talking about the attacks. One man claimed with absolute confidence that it was the work of Osama bin Laden. I knew who bin Laden was (I'd written a satire for my high school paper about how he was behind Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys, true tools of terror that they are), but said we shouldn't rush to judgment, we had to make sure we went after the right people in retribution. I guess we were both right.