I've made many mistakes in my life, but one thing I've tried to do well is mothering. At the end of my life, not one thing will matter except my son and my daughter. They are everything to me. That's why this particular audio from 9/11 really tugs at my heart.
This is the part they don’t play.
— Louis Montoya (@montoyalouis1) September 8, 2026
Melissa Doi. 32. 83rd floor. South Tower.
“I feel fire.”
Then she makes sure her mother hears it anyway:
“Tell her I love her so much. I love her. She was the best mother a person could ever have.”
An only child. They told her to go back… https://t.co/BwmgpShMhF pic.twitter.com/BhVmG9Utik
To hear this daughter desperate to ensure her Mother knows she was loved and appreciated is heartbreaking. She was an only child. So am I. I can put myself in the shoes of her mother so easily. I worry about calls like that every single time my firefighter son goes to work. These were real people. It's sometimes very easy to forget that.
An interesting debate has been happening on X over the last few days. The Gen Z kiddos who truly believe they know it all, don't believe people 30 and up were traumatized by 9/11 because we all watched it all day. Maybe they don't understand because television now doesn't work like it did back then. In 2001, there was no way to escape the coverage.
Idk how to tell y'all gen z or whoever it is trying to gaslight millenials and older that we're making up that we watched graphic news footage of 9/11 all day long in classrooms, in store windows, at home, etc but we most definitely did. On every channel. Every. Channel.
— State of Rach (@Like_AFolkSong) September 8, 2026
It was literally everywhere. I was teaching elementary school the day it happened. I remember our principal coming into the lunchroom and asking staff to turn off the televisions because it may be too much for the children. Everyone was so stunned the adults hadn't even considered turning the coverage off. I'm sure most elementary schools were much the same. The next day the kids made a huge flag with their handprints and we hung it in the hallway.
Since you weren’t even born yet, I’m going to answer in good faith:
— Brain Leakage (@BrainLeakage03) September 7, 2026
9/11 was America’s collective loss of innocence. In the decades prior, we’d won the Cold War by outspending the Soviets. We were the sole remaining superpower, and we were in a period of peace and economic… https://t.co/Dqi6WW8wKs pic.twitter.com/N73SUq28P9
There is so much heartache behind those days. It's the fault of the adults that teens and kids today don't understand why that day changed so much. It was our responsibility to teach them and we didn't. We forgot. That's on us. We were 'gentle parenting' and people like Mamdani swooped in and took advantage.
Yeah, and Millenials and Gen X and Boomers and Silent Generation all went through COVID just like Gen Z did. Nobody is saying COVID wasn’t traumatic. We just don’t understand why Gen Z feels this intense drive to negate the trauma of 9/11. It does almost feel like envy. https://t.co/EtyRLYx9fJ
— Tater Tots McGee (@tatertotsconor) September 8, 2026
It would be really great if Gen Z could put down their sanctimonious attitudes for just a few days to recognize this was one of those events that changed history.
