Where Were You?

     Last night, May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was confirmed dead. It's one of those chilling "where were you?" moments that we'll be talking about for years to come.
    On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in 8th grade and getting ready for school that Tuesday. I knew something was up when my dad turned on the TV to the news. Then the images flooded in. It was horrifying and scary and oh I still shudder when I think about it. That day at school is a blur but everyone was talking about it. Naturally, being junior high schoolers, we didn't really understand the huge significance. I just remember a teacher saying that our trip to Washington D.C. most likely was not going to happen. The news around what was going on in New York came out more and more.
     A few days later, my family learned that my mom's cousin, who is a doctor, had been at Ground Zero for three straight days. She finally got home on the fourth, burned her bloody clothes and slept for a day. A guy my dad knew from high school was one of the firefighters killed and a distant cousin was killed in the towers. We saw their names on the wall of the memorial a few years later when we visited.
     Now, nearly 10 years later, the evil man who was the mastermind behind it all has been killed. Gone. But the war on terrorism is not over. There is no way in hell those who supported him will take this lying down. The country is once again on high alert and now my 22 year old self is much more aware. And admittedly scared.
    I was watching TV with my roommate and as our nightly routine, both of us were sitting on our respective couches with our laptops up. We were watching "Real Housewives of Orange County" because, well, we need to watching something mind numbing once in a while. I refreshed my Facebook page and 7 new statuses popped up, all about Osama bin Laden's supposed death. I gasped and my fingers flew to Google. With Google tentatively confirming it, I said something to my roommate, who by the way is studying for her LSATs and had an internship on Capitol Hill last semester and knows more about government and foreign policy than I ever want to know. She said if it's true it's huge, turn on CNN.
      It was 7:59. I read that the president was supposed to have made an address at 7:30 ET. Obviously, that didn't happen. Finally, at 8:30 President Obama delivered a quick 7 minute speech that confirmed what all of social media was blasting. And I mean blasting. Watching Twitter auto-refresh along with Facebook was surreal. It was history at my fingertips.
     I stayed up until about 11 pm watching it all unfold. And of course this morning told more. It's a huge moment in history and one that will certainly affect us in the coming days, weeks, months and probably years. We'll get through this.

So where were you?