It’s three years to the day, today, since the 9/11/2001 attacks on the US. As I grow older, I will, along with the rest of my generation, be able to tell anyone who asks exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news. I have nothing really new to add to an experience that the whole nation shared, just my own particular memories.

What I remember the most about that day is how hard it was to realize what had actually happened, the magnitude of it. Part of this is because, by that time, I was no longer regularly watching televised news, but rather getting all of my news off of the Internet. I happened, that morning, to be reading Slashdot and chatting on AIM with my friend Erik. One of the Slashdot headlines had some sketchy information on some breaking news, that a plane of some kind had collided with one of the Twin Towers. I imagined some little one- or two-passenger plane clipping the side of the skyscraper by mistake and falling into the streets below. Bad, certainly, but filed under Bizarre Accident.

Then it became clear that the plane was somehow still stuck inside the tower, which was more shocking but still seemingly an accident. I just couldn’t imagine that it was a passenger jet. It would never have occurred to me. Even when this fact became clear I still thought that it must be a reporting error. Then my friend Erik started sending me instant messages, and said, “The tower fell.” I could not take it in. Fell? I thought for a minute that maybe by “tower” he meant just the antenna tower, but he didn’t, and he said, “Turn on the TV.”

It’s still hard to believe, really, three years later. It’s strange to be living in a world that seems to be the basis for an action flick, complete with homicidal supervillains that want to bring death or slavery to the world. In the weeks that followed I remember seeing a picture in Newsweek of one of the radical Muslim clerics who supported Al-Qaida. He had a patch over one eye and a hook for one hand, shouting diatribes through his remaining rotten teeth. I goggled at the picture and then laughed out loud—if someone had created such a villain for a movie, it would have been dismissed as unbelievable and insulting to the audience’s intelligence.

It’s also quite important to remember that this day is a day of remembrance for the Arab world, also. It’s one that they celebrate by dancing and shooting into the air (Wikipedia article, see near the bottom). This is the setting of the 21st century: supervillains and their cackling henchmen aplenty, but no superheroes in sight.