I Have Witnessed History

Everyone has witnessed something momentous in their lifetimes, but a part of me feels this is something I should say now.


I'm 22, going on 23, I've been alive during many historic moments, I turned 1 the day the Berlin Wall fell, I was in school or daycare when the OJ Simpson trial happened, I heard Bil Clinton say "I did not have sexual relations with this woman" a million times on the news but I wasn't aware of that. I've been alive when things happened in other countries that were big and I'm still just looking into these events.


I became much more socially aware when a few kids shot of their high school when I was still in elementary school. A few years later religious radicals took down the World Trade Center. I was in seventh grade in the middle of class and kids were being pulled from school by their parents. I don't remember if my day officially ended early, or if I just went home with barely whispered rumors filling in what happened. It's the only thing that was on television that afternoon, it stopped America in it's tracks. People fretted and mourned, there was chaos and confusion. The Pentagon had been hit (between  few and several) miles from where I was in school, from where I lived.

At some point there were the DC snipers and Bush sent troops West to find and destroy Al-Qaeda.  The troops stayed West and things happened. I apparently wasn't all that aware if I can't tell you what happened for about 6 years, school happened an my mother died things I remember but don't make history. Someone attempts to destroy the British Underground, but doesn't quite succeed. Gay marriage is an important political topic of discussion and wed is decriminalized. I'm older and go off to college and vote for the first time and a black man becomes President of the United States of America, something that has always been possible but somehow not plausible for Americans to accept.


An oil spill fucks over the environment and the oppressed rise up over dictatorships and the nation stops when the celebrities die but that last has always happened. The earth itself rises up to remind humanity that they are not the greatest and that superficial differences ought be forgot and people send aid to New Orleans, Haiti and Japan. Racism is alive and well in America, even as people act like old racist symbols aren't racist, but they totally are. I'm focused on my non historic finals and classes when Osama Bin Laden is taken out.


In ten years, a few months shy of the 10th Anniversary of the WTC going down the man we were told was pretty much Enemy Number One has been killed. The nation revels in the death of one, someone who has been Othered to the point of being a concept and less a person. I can say I heard the information, then went to sleep. I think this is something that people need a moment to absorb, things are going to be interesting for a minute. I don't know. I just wrote this.  Maybe I'll continue to write about historic moments when they happen, but you really don't know if something will be big until it's been years, but I think that waiting hours is fair for something like this.


Jasmine P.