9/12

Patriots.

They were the team I covered for the newspaper. The Owen Valley Patriots.

On the Friday night after 9/11, it still seemed like 9/12.

The team was playing the Northview Knights. But pretty much it was still difficult for anyone to concentrate much on anything. I stood on the sidelines, randomly talking to coaches and assistants, but I really was talking more with the players and managers that night.

While the lives of American's had changed -- their world really had. They were at the age they were going to be directly affected by this new war. I imagined some, maybe many of them, would be spending time in a very dusty place. I feared some may not make it back home.

It was still very new, this war. But this wasn't going to be something settled over a diplomatic talk and courtroom in The Hague. This was going to get much more bloody before there was a moment of peace. By Friday, we had an approximate death count, but I don't think it was as high as some had initially feared. And we knew much more about the basics of the plot, but I don't think any of us thought it was a one-and-done mission. We were still waiting ... trying to anticipate.

I stood there at a high school football game outside of Brazil, Indiana, and thought: Man, I wonder if terrorists would hit this? A soft target. A lot of victims. I imagine I wasn't the only one with my eyes a little more open. Situational awareness. Or paranoia. Probably a mix of both.

There was still some worry. I'm sure I was going to find out about some people who were somehow hurt or directly affected by the attacks. And I thought about a buddy of mine who had recently made it into Army special forces. Don't get dead, I thought.

It is an odd part of humanity, how we concentrate on our own future when we see the futures of others eliminated. I hadn't gone to the Navy to reenlist ... I had considered it ... but it wasn't like my rate was a necessary one. And, honestly, I didn't want to re-up for four years since, at this point, I really thought this was going to be a war of a few months. Maybe a few years.

Someone asked me if I was going to rejoin. I shrugged. I wasn't going to lie.

"Ask me in six weeks," I think I said. By that time, I figured we'd know if this was World War III or Grenada.

I looked again at the kids as they took to the field and the national anthem was performed. It had been a surreal week; no jets in the skies. No clue what was next. I'd been trying to save money, so I didn't have cable television and so I became a big listener of AM radio. The conspiracy theories were already flowing. The Trialateral Commission and Nostradomus were suddenly big topics. I looked again at the kids. All that B.S. was not going to mean much if this becomes a really hot war.

I thought about my friend in the special forces. And I thought about these kids. Don't get dead, I thought.

It's still 9/12 to me in a lot of ways. In the weeks after the attacks, I wrote a column for my newspaper that said -- essentially -- don't give up your freedoms by giving into a lot more tighter security. Some readers were angry. I was unpatriotic for writing it, by their estimations. I'm sure I've been called worse.

In the years after 9/11, it's still 9/12 in a lot of ways. We are more situationally aware, or paranoid. Where we once ignored Islam, many of us tend to fear it. Early on, I just figured the terrorists were not that much different from suicidal members of the Ku Klux Klan. A small percentage of Christians tout themselves as KKK members -- not any stretch of a large number. If we did it right, we could surgically eliminate the majority of the cancer and isolate the rest.

As I started to notice people becoming more conservative, I felt suddenly an urge to become more liberal. Not in terms of wanting to hand out food stamps. I just didn't want us as a nation flying our flags high and dropping bombs low on every villager in Afghanistan. We Americans. We're better than that. Let the terrorists kill the innocent; that is their downfall. We just kill terrorists. Because if we don't, I felt, the cancer will only grow.

God, I thought. I hope we do this right.

I looked out onto the field. And I hoped, for the sake of both teams and all these communities -- all of us -- that we would.

Patriots.