rant · moment 13 of 24
Where I Was on 9/11
from The Presidential Debate & Eating Cats | The Tim Dillon Show #409 · #409
4 min
Tim recounts being in high school on Long Island when 9/11 happened, the confusion, classmates whose parents had died, and the strange communal vulnerability that followed, before praising George W. Bush's bullhorn speech at Ground Zero as the peak of American unity.
- Tim recalls sitting in Mrs. Rice's history class at Holy Trinity in Hixville, New York on 9/11, uncertain whether he was in 10th or 11th grade.
- Mrs. Rice pulled out of class to announce attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, noting the towers had been bombed before and no one yet knew they had fallen.
- Friends in study hall watched the second plane hit the towers while classmates who lost parents that day didn't yet know their parents were gone.
- The attacks created a feeling of vulnerability American teenagers had never experienced before, a realization that things could go wrong in America.
- In the immediate aftermath, there was a sense of community with candlelit vigils and memorials springing up across the country.
- Bush's speech at the towers—'the people who did this are going to be hearing from us all'—was the best moment of that era, and it was all downhill from there.
- Tim explains he loves 9/11 not because of the death, but because that moment was genuinely inspiring and marked the peak of national unity before everything deteriorated.
- As a high school student watching Bush's speech, Tim believed America would win and that victory was within reach—how quaint that belief seems now.
PentagonWorld Trade CenterSeptember 11George W. BushHoly TrinityHicksville