It should surprise nobody that time passes, but it somehow still seems remarkable that the 9-11 attacks were eighteen years ago today. I was on the other side of the continent in California, working at an ICBM factory south of San Jose; and even though there were no attacks our way, that didn’t stop the rumor machine from *inventing* attacks. A truck bomb in town? Turned out to be a vehicle backfiring. A tanker detonating in Discovery Bay? Nope. A truck bomb on one of the major bridges? A truck that had legitimately broken down. The bobcat that was looking down on me from three feet above in an outdoor boneyard as I dug through ten-year-old bits and pieces looking for usable parts of cruise missile booster motors so we could get production back up and running again ASAP? That was real enough, but that was less of an “attack” and more of a “curious kitty.”
And now people who were born on that, and even several years prior, who have no recollection of a world *without* 9-11 and the resulting cultural, political military and legal changes, are adults. This just weirds me out.