Terrorism and a vantage point

The acuteness of my senses and the vulnerability of my sensibilities were formed in middle childhood. The taste of snow still reminds me of laziness and thick blankets. The smell of chlorine throws me back to my cousin's pool. Forested pictures on bent-corner postcards weirdly remind me of a vacation I can't lucidly recall but of which I unmistakably know. I feel a strong, personal foundation formed during the years between the ages of six and 12, subconsciously idealizing the positive experiences and romanticizing the more trying times. I am instinctually rooted in those strange ages and, by proxy, to the midto late- 1980s.

In light of this I respond to a question posited by professor Robert George when he kindly discussed the terrorist attack and ensuing crisis at an informal discussion held last Sunday. He wanted insight into the student's frame of mind with respect to the recent events. How has previous society shaped the modern student and how does that reflect his or her processing of late events? Surely our environmental influences have differed from those of the World War II-era generation or from those who came of age during Vietnam. Thinking back on George's question, I find myself consistently turning to the Cold War.

As a kid my greatest fear was that I would see or hear a lone nuclear missile overhead as it arched towards the front door. It was bound to happen of course. The Soviet Union hated us, was pretty much evil and had nuclear missiles. Why wouldn't a bad person do a bad thing? It takes just one little, crazy, naughty moment to do one bad thing or merely one sneaky servant to slip into the main office and send a bomb. It just made sense that it would happen. Somehow it did not. But the fear lurked regardless, a fear not of troops or shooting planes or tanks but of a single, surprise attack.

In the grand scheme, I wonder how unique that childhood was? Surely the Cold War existed before the 1980s. But earlier there was either robust military talk and propaganda or a physical manifestation of force.

In the Eighties there was an inexact uneasiness. There was no Eastern Bloc, Cuba or Vietnam to serve as a tangible, pressing threat. There was instead time for uncomfortable disaffection and circular, impregnable realizations. If we think we're right, they probably think they're right. If one side has bombs, the other has to have bombs. And there is always that sub-static fear, the kind you feel while waiting in your bedroom during a bad thunderstorm, thinking it shouldn't take this long for Mom to run to the grocery store.

Is that where I come from? Raised on the foundation of terror? And is that why I flinch when the television anchors and guests explain that America will never be the same and that everyone's life will inexorably change? Is that why, while I feel anger, empathy, patriotism and great energy from Sept. 11's events, I don't feel a real change in myself or in my world? And is that why I feel more frustrated than scared? Or am I just young with my world being made rather than changed? These are difficult questions; every question terror raises is difficult, and every question is cold. Eric Bland is an English major from Richmond, VA. He can be reached at ebbland@princeton.edu.