"Holy crap, hey look at this; you can totally see people jumping out of windows and stuff. That's crazy."

"Miss, I want to do my research paper on Osama bin Laden."

"That's too recent; it's going to be too hard to write something comprehensive because it's kind of an on-going thing. Is there something else you'd want to write about?"

"Okay, I want to do September 11th."

Pause.

"Okay."

I've had variations of this conversation several times in the five years I've been teaching, particularly recently with the death of Osama bin Laden. Three of my fourteen College Writing students independently asked me if they could do bin Laden as a topic for their final papers in June, and two of them switched to September 11th when I said no.

In and of itself, reading papers about September 11th isn't excessively upsetting for me. Yes, the casual, matter-of-fact tone in which the students recount which planes were hijacked, which buildings were struck, and how many people died does irk me, but it's hard to blame them for feeling a little detached. Most of them were in first or second grade when it happened, and they often describe their feelings on that day in terms of confusion, curiosity, or sadness in reaction to their parents' sadness.

The sentiment I have most often encountered among my students, and I admit that this does not necessarily represent a true majority, but rather just the majority of the outspoken individuals, is doubt. They have heard endless conspiracy theories about explosives in the bottom of the building. They characterize George W. Bush simultaneously as a diabolical mastermind and a retarded man-child.  As far as they are concerned, Bush/the government/"we" were responsible for 9/11 for two reasons: being too incompetent to prevent it but also orchestrating it.  The simple logical impossibility of those two both being true makes me twitchy.  It's like when Picard planned to destroy the Borg by uploading a paradox to their network.  Does not compute.

But beyond the herp-a-durr factor, there is another element of this attitude that bothers me even more so.  They approach the topic, and the issue of blame/conspiracy/etc., with the same casual way we discuss the circumstances of Mr. Boddy's death when we play Clue.  It's not real to them in the sense that they are disturbed by the attacks or driven by an emotional reaction to find out what "really" happened.  I don't know if they are so desensitized to death/disaster/Sept. 11th that it doesn't strike them as an emotional issue.  I don't know if they somehow feel that if the attacks were staged/faked, then the death and sadness and shock associated with that day are less meaningful.  It could simply be that they were too young to experience those emotions at the time, so they will always be detached, like those of my generation feel about the Challenger explosion or the Lockerbie plane bombing/crash.

The passionate, superior, insistent way in which my students argue with me about the facts surrounding the attacks, call me over to watch the YouTube video that "totally proves" whatever theory they've become convinced of, look at me with skepticism mixed with pity because I've been "duped" into believing that Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked planes without the knowledge or complicity of the US government...it makes me want to shake them.  I want to shout in their faces, "I know why you think this, and I know that you don't understand the difference between fact and suspicion...I know you want to believe that Bush was evil and that these attacks were carried out in manner entirely different from what they say on TV.  I know you want to believe these things because it helps you justify your hate of the government and authority, and it feeds into your already-established distrust of everyone with more power than you, and it makes you feel special and powerful to know the truth that other people don't know.  I know that.  But you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.  You just don't.  If you had sources of any reliability, evidence that stood up to even the slightest scrutiny, or remotely plausible motives and methods behind the facts you're presenting, I would listen to you and hear you out.  But since you don't, you come off sounding like a total fucking asshole.  Shut.  The Fuck.  Up."

But I can't say that, so I don't.  I try to teach them how to evaluate sources for accuracy, bias, and reliability.  I try to teach them not to be so gullible and trusting of anyone who has ever said anything on the internet.  I try to teach them that the government is not organized, well-funded, or aggressively dickish enough to pull of September 11th, and instead they just slowly cut funding to poor people, sometimes by accident.  I try to teach them to question, analyze, evaluate, re-evaluate, wonder, critique...all before deciding, and ultimately knowing.

The reason their conclusion-jumping bothers me so much with this topic is that September 11th still makes me really, really sad.  And angry.  When students are researching the attacks and watching YouTube clips of the second plane hitting, or the towers collapsing, I leave the room, pretending I have urgent business in the hall.  I can't watch that shit.  This week in particular has been brutal because every news station is airing 10th Anniversary stuff, with footage of the attacks and the wreckage at Ground Zero cut into every ad spot, promo, and news segment.  My mom planned a standard family dinner on Sunday, September 11th, and I don't want to go.  I want to sit alone in a room.  I don't want to treat it like a normal day, because for me, it's not.

I don't know if other people feel this way, especially people who didn't know anyone who died that day.  I don't really care if it's normal to be this upset.  But I certainly don't want to be surrounded by a group of people who aren't as upset as me.  Or, perhaps worse, a group of people who are upset and want me to be upset with them.  That's why I'm not attending any ceremonies or vigils.  Contrary to the impression this blog post gives, these feelings are personal.  Private.  I don't want to share them with anyone, especially not my students.  Thank god it's on a Sunday, I guess.