(From World on Campus) They missed the debut of the iPhone, never downloaded a book to a Kindle, didn’t listen to music on Spotify, or get charmed by the antics of nieces and nephews on Instagram. They couldn’t know to tweet their location that Tuesday morning. Jay Z had a baby? With Beyoncé? They seem like our contemporaries to this day even though they never learned what was lurking in Voldemort’s past.

They missed the invasion of Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, years upon years of war. They missed out on the jargon we’ve learned to throw around so easily: IEDs and suicide vests, TSA and orange alerts, Ground Zero referring to just one spot on earth that everyone everywhere knows. They never had to remove their shoes to get through airport security. The lexicon that arose in the very moment of history they stood in, they never knew. They wore pumps and pencil skirts, khakis and button-downs to a war they entered without ever knowing it.

I am thinking especially, on this 9/11 morning 12 years later, of the young men, the bond traders at Cantor Fitzgerald arriving for work on the 102nd or 103rd floor of the north tower, thinking of their banter, their hopes and dreams, the deals they planned to close that day.

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