I was 14 and school just ended, I met up with my brother and 3 of his friends at the front of school and walked home together as we usually do. Since we had a Playstation 2, our ritual was to play some video games after school before we had to do our homework. One of my brothers friend challenged me as I had beaten him the day before in the NHL game. We finally made it to our house and I pulled the Playstation 2 out of the entertainment center and started plugging in everything. My brother went into my parents room to watch some cartoons when suddenly he came running to the living room and shouting that America was being attacked. His friends and I looked at my brother and asked what he was talking about, when suddenly the TV switched to the news and like my brother said one of the towers was up in smoke, I remarked that it must be an accident, maybe the plane flew too close and hit the building, before I could finish this thought the 2nd plane ploughed into the 2nd tower and that’s when I realized the gravity of this event. We sat there watching the news for a couple more minutes before we switched on the Playstation 2 and played games as we intended to. Since we were so far away from America and not knowing the impact it would have the next years on our lives, playing videos games at the time seemed to desensitize what we felt at the time.
When I was 25, I visited NY with my girlfriend (now wife) and visited the 9/11 memorial. Standing there and seeing first hand how huge these buildings must have been. I couldn’t fathom the chaos and carnage that happened where we stood all those years earlier…. all awhile I was a kid in another country just playing video games when these great towers fell and so many lost their lives.