Of course it’s so obvious that it hadn’t even entered my mind these last (almost) nine months, but September 11 is this generation’s Kennedy Moment, that time where for the rest of your life you’ll remember where you were and what you were doing when it happened or you found out.

I remember when my high school AP History teacher was talking about Kennedy and said we probably didn’t have a moment like that in our generation, and several of us piped up with the Challenger explosion. A few others were when Reagan was shot (I don’t remember), when the Iran hostage rescue attempt failed, or the Loma Prieta Earthquake (well, for us Californians). Still, most of us felt that Challenger was a good example, if not the Paragon Exemplar of the phenomenon that JFK’s assassination was. Several months later, the air attack on Baghdad would be another such moment, staying up and watching the green night-vision

I’m surprised that I didn’t actually think about it until today, the last day of the clearing and recovery effort at Manhattan’s ground zero, just how big a cognitive reference point this will be in peoples lives. September 11th may be the day we lost our innocence (if it wasn’t lost already in the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). It will certainly outstrip Challenger as my primary Kennedy Moment.

I’m wondering how this compares in the mind of someone old enough to have had the Kennedy assassination affect them? We may still be too close to this one to be able to get a clear perspective, but I’d love to hear your own impressions, along with any Kennedy Moments I may have overlooked.