 So I was seven years old when 9-11 happened. Miss Coasey's second grade classroom. Tell most of my chiefs that, and they lose their minds a little bit. They're a little angry. They were Lance Corporals at the time. But in that classroom, we were watching TV. And then we were watching TV anyway. My teacher switched over the channels after she heard what happened. We saw what was happening on the news. We didn't really understand what was going on, me being my second grade classmates, I guess. Everybody started getting picked up early, so we thought something was going on. But we didn't understand. We were seven years old. My dad came and picked me up. He was a firefighter in town. He picked me up. My mom met me at home. And then he went away for about three weeks. Bound out later, he went across the river right over New York City. We grew up in Clarkton, Jersey. It's not a far drive. But he went over to Brooklyn to start cutting up the trucks, fire trucks, FBI vehicles. And they were told to look for the black box. Like three weeks later, he came back. He was definitely upset. Definitely agitated. There was a vigil in town for 9-11 happening. I still didn't know what was going on. I was eight years old. About a year later, he finally explained what it was, what they did, who they were, why they did it, and what some people called Marines were going to go do about it in Afghanistan. Kind of grew up always watching the news, seeing Afghan reels, seeing what was going on. And seven, eight, nine years old, Iraq popped off. And I was in fourth grade, the invasion, and you see more of those clips on the news. I definitely feel like I wanted to join because of what happened on 9-11. I didn't want anybody doing that again in this country. Further down the road, still, my dad is actually suffering, it's called frontal of dementia. It's not a very popular disease. But it's associated from the PTSD, from what he did at post 9-11, just finding bodies, finding people. But I don't think he would have had it any other way. He always kind of wanted to be of service, even with the dementia. The last few sentences he'd normally say were like, how can I help? It's just what he was in his nature. And then here we are today in 2021, 20 years later. And I don't think there's many today that grew up in a post, or grew up in a world without 9-11. I mean, you have 20-year-olds joining the Marine Corps, 17, 18, 19-year-olds joining the Marine Corps, and they weren't even alive, but they still dealt with the after effects, the TSA security, the Patriot Act, like everything that has to do with a post 9-11 world, and they grew up in it. I was already a kid at the time. I got to experience before and after. It's not a luxury many have. Many of the Marines I work with were either already born a few years older than me, or are younger than me, and it's a weird generational gap to try to convey what it was on that day. I've never seen more American flags on the street in my entire life than September 12th, 13th, 14th. Never felt more proud to be an American every Memorial Day barbecue you hear, like, God bless the USA or something, and you felt like that sense of pride. It takes you back to like 9-12 or any day after 9-11. It was a pretty amazing time to be an American, despite tragedy. It's amazing how we can come together so quick after something so devastating.