I look back on 9-11 and wish I was at least the age I am now so I could grasp the enormity of the that fateful day when the two planes crashed into the Twin Towers. I was only seven when it happened and I wasn’t even that upset about it. All I remember was that the teacher of my class at the time turning on the TV murmuring something about some “bad plane crashes,” and then the next thing I knew was that the whole school was going home early. I was excited about getting out of school at twelve, but still didn’t really know what was going on. I wasn’t scared either until I found out that there were bad men that were trying terrorize the nation and I was scared that they were going to fly a plane into my house next, but the fear didn’t last long because seven year olds aren’t really understand it. To them, fear was the decorations hall in Target on Halloween.


I believe we as kids don’t really try to understand the news or politics under we’re about 13 years old, because it’s a little high over our heads, and the fact that children kind of focus on their small little world and not the bigger reality around them. For me, politics was just a regular old social studies lesson, where the government was divided into three branches and so on. I guess it was really a good time to get into politics when I was in 8th grade because that’s when Obama v. Clinton v. McCain’s race for president started. That was what got me into watching the world news every night, and today I still do.

During a dictatorship, children are the most susceptible to fall under brainwashing because they think what the dictator is doing is just how the world is. Anita didn’t really know about Trujillo until she listened in on what her father and Tio Toni was talking about. Her parents were lucky that she went to an American School were they didn’t really praise Trujillo besides her going to the academy that Lorena went to where they practiced