`I remember the day of the 9/11 attacks. It was the day before my birthday and my mother’s, and the day of my best friend’s father’s birthday. I was too young to understand it, and it would be years before I’d fill my head with literature and documentaries on the attacks to understand what had happened that day.

My father picked me up from school, and I remember his smell and his youth. His navy blue worn Teamsters hat with black hair flowing out of the back. He looked serious, a little distraught, with a furrowed brow. He asked me how school was, and I said it was good. And then I asked him, “What’s wrong?”

And all he said was, “Something bad happened today.” And that was the end of the conversation.

We walked across Aaron Street and then down George and through Dover. My birthday was the following day and like most years, even though we were back in school, the sun hadn’t yet decided it was time for fall weather and was still beating down with the intensity of summer. I don’t remember how much we talked, or if we talked, but I remember being happy despite the circumstances.

Once we walked through the front door, we were in the living room and there was footage. I remember smoke and I remember my father standing behind the couch, watching. Because when anything intense was happening in the world, he never sat. He stood, restless, like he wanted to do something but knew he was helpless to do so.

But I sat on the couch, reading comics and sinking into the old cushions that enveloped me like a second skin. School was over, the weather was beautiful and I had my comics and my birthday, and my whole life ahead of me. I was happy and in the background was chaos.

The following morning, I woke up and walked to the dining room where the entire table was filled from corner to corner with comics and a card sitting in the middle. I felt like the happiest kid in the world, because the real world was not my world. The scenes on the news of the twin towers could have been a movie. Maybe one directed by Michael Bay, where a hero was going to go up and rescue everyone and everything would be okay. There were no stakes to real-life events for a kid, because they weren’t real. People didn’t die. The world was a haven for everyone, where people could walk home from school and sit on a couch and read comics, and get more for their birthday and then go to school where everyone smiled and said Happy Birthday, and then came home to cake with candles lit and their mom and father singing to them, and telling them that no matter what, they needed to feel special on their birthday.

As I grow older, nostalgia becomes a stronger and stronger force. And as many mundane memories from childhood slip into that dark ether where the less important moments go, all that remains is the mundane of today and the spectacular of those years. Creating a pseudo-fantasy, one that can be dangerous if not checked.

I spoke to my brother not long ago about writing a book based on our childhoods in the 90s and early 2000s. I said,

“Do you actually remember what it was like, then? Like actually remember?” He thought about it for a moment and then said.

“Not really. Some things. The movies we went to see in the theatre. The year we won the Varsity basketball championship. Things like that.”

I said, “Yeah. me too. But everyone our age is online everyday complaining that the world is shit now, and how much better it was 20 years ago.”

“Well, it was.” He said.

“How do you figure?”

He paused for a moment. “Look at this way, when you’re a kid, nothing is too late. That’s what nostalgia is. It’s the reason that people can look back at their father’s coming home drunk and beating their asses with a smile. Because even though it was likely horrible at the time, what they did was go to their room afterwards and dream. Man, in a couple of years, I’ll be out of this town. Shit like that. But now, the magic is wearing off, you see? Sure, self-help gurus will still tell you that everything is possible, but we know now that we’re not going to the NBA. We know we’re not going to play any sports professionally. You know now that you’re most likely not going to be a rock star. That’s why the past is better, because it wasn’t about what we were actually doing, it was about the possibilities of what we could do.”

“Wow.” I said and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” He asked.

“I was just thinking about 9/11.”

“That’s weird.” We laughed again.

“I know. I was remembering dad picking me up from school on 9/11 and telling me that something bad had happened. I was just remembering him younger, and stronger and walking home down Aaron and George and Dover, and the news being on the TV when I got home. I remember dad standing behind the couch, pacing like he always did. But I remember being happy, even as the news showed total destruction and the next day was the birthday when dad filled the dining room table with comics. You remember that?”

“I do.” He said. Then he laughed. “I was thinking about that not too long ago, too.”

9/11?”

“Well, kind of. It was at the same time that Brad and I stole the golf cart and crashed it. Remember?”

“Oh yeah, I remember.”

“That was the same time. I broke my arm and told mom I broke it falling off a swing. Remember? We even went to the hospital in Bathurst, where mom went off on the doctor for saying that there was no way I broke it falling off a swing.”

At that, we both erupted in laughter. Picturing my mom screaming at a doctor, yelling, “If my son says he broke it falling off a swing, then he broke it falling off a swing!!”

“Then dad taped a wooden spoon to my arm and wrapped it in gauze. Remember that? I was playing baseball at the time and we practiced that whole fall. It was fucking brutal. Throwing the ball in the front yard with a broken arm and a wooden spoon taped to it. I was just thinking about that because I remember looking at your comics on the dining room table and accidentally knocking a couple on the floor with my spoon hand and you getting upset.”

“Shit, eh? I don’t remember that. That’s hilarious.”

“Yeah, the old man really wanted me to play in the majors. For a little while there, I thought it was possible.”

“You were pretty good.”

“Yeah,” he said with a tinge of sadness in his voice.

“Your arm was broken, and you were in a shitload of pain and I was sitting on the couch as the towers fell. And yet these are wonderful memories.”

“They’re all wonderful memories. That’s the problem.”

Everything is illuminated by nostalgia, even the guillotine. The French Revolution, or one of them, anyway, inspired so many works of fiction, some even still remain drenched in nostalgia, put to music and characters’ stock cutouts of revolutionaries even some two hundred, three hundred, years after the last head rolled off its body.

The death of the United Healthcare CEO only again unites those who struggle, who have spent hours of their lives on the phone begging for coverage, sometimes denied care completely due to bureaucratic loopholes and profit motive, just as the French Revolution united those who hungered without bread from the Royalty who were armed only cake and cluelessness. Who would wistfully remember the guillotine, when the state who has a monopoly on violence detests people putting their rights to good use?

Rights were only real after the Revolution, after all, and we risk losing what our ancestors fought for. That's because as time marches on, nostalgia leaving some buoyant against the rising tide of political ideologies. Others drown, just as the heads that rolled were not always cake-eating royalty. Ideally, the next revolution ought not to be violent, but what else has ever brought about change? People's hearts are harder than ever, both literally and metaphorically.