Yep, Johnny. Just like that.

Yesterday marked the 15th year since those planes crashed in to those buildings. I have replayed the events of that Tuesday morning over and over again with each new school year. Each new group of kids that has stepped in to my classroom has had to sit through a pretty intense Social Studies lesson within our first week or two of meeting each other.

Time hasn't taken away the chills for those of us that vowed to "Never Forget". Personally, I decided that my best way to cope was to make the school day closest to 9-11 a teaching moment through my own personal account of "teaching a class full of innocent children". That day that forever changed how many people see the world was the second week of my first ever teaching gig.
I was the new guy in town.

And the rest, as they say, is History.

That's actually become part of my lesson. I tell the kids that sometimes it's best to put the books away and experience life through others. Become a traveler by listening to a traveler. Learn about a different time by visiting with an elder. See the world through another set of eyes. Each year, we put down the books and I just tell it like it was those 15 years ago.

I've got a couple of visual aids. I pull down maps just like I did when the live images were still pasted on the classroom TV. I pass around the Star Tribune from September 12th. Sometimes I get a little animated. I might scream a little or laugh a lot and occasionally a tear sneaks down my cheek. Hell, who am I kidding? Regularly, tears sneak out.

The first anniversary was difficult. Each successive year after has never been any easier. And it wasn't long until I had kids in my class that were too young to remember where they were when the world stopped turning. Eventually enough time passed and I found myself teaching about that terrible day that happened long before any of my listeners were even born. But in this year's lesson I've reached a major milestone. I knew it might some day come.

This year I have a kid of a kid.

This year there's a young man that is an important part of this 4th grade roster. And just 15 short years ago, his mother was one of those innocent 6th grade children looking to me for some kind of answers or direction in a world that was immediately turned upside down by evil.

And I can still tell the story just like it was yesterday.

In a part of my recollections I try to relate to the kids how scared we were - how we were being pasted with these haunting live images of terrible destruction. I taught them about Governor Ventura telling us to keep the kids at school and do our business the best we could but by the end of the evening all any of us wanted to do was see something from our normal, something from our usual way of life. I let this year's 4th graders know about my now 19 year old son, then only 4, just wanting to watch some SpongeBob but how every channel on every TV carried these haunting images of something we couldn't run away from.....

And then....

Little Johnny raised his hand and asked,

"Like when PRINCE died?"

Yep, Johnny. Just like that.

I put my hands on his cute chubby cheeks and told him I was so happy that he was in my class this year and maybe a little tear snuck out.

Hell, who am I kidding?