© The Associated Press / Kantele FrankoXavier Montjoy plays a video game at his home in Columbus, Ohio. Montjoy was born hours before the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Like millions of children born in the past decade, Xavier has never known a world untouched by that day’s terror attacks. He’s played baseball and soccer and hates math like generations before him but is growing up in a new normal. In this world, Afghanistan has always been a place of war, and several of his relatives in the military have been deployed overseas. Border security was tightened, and there are travel restrictions that hamper family trips and force travelers to stand in security lines in socks or bare feet at the airport near his house on a tree-lined Columbus street.
Xavier Montjoy sits on his bed in a T-shirt and shorts, his side-swept blond bangs and dark-rimmed glasses framing squinted hazel eyes and furrowed brows. He's trying to recount how his parents recently explained that Sept. 11, 2001, had meaning beyond being the day he was born, but all he remembers at the moment is that they said something about planes crashing in three parts of the country.
In his life, he says, it's just not a big deal.
Like the millions of children born in the past decade, he's never known a world untouched by that day's terrorist attacks. He's played baseball and soccer and hates math like generations before him but is growing up in a new normal shaped by the events of that day and the people behind them. In this world, the military has deployed several of his relatives overseas, and security officers maintain tighter border security and enforce travel restrictions that leave fliers standing in security lines in socks or bare feet at the airport near his house on a tree-lined Columbus street.
As for Osama bin Laden, the boy says, who was he? Xavier remembers hearing about bin Laden's death the day after it happened, when he says classmates announced "Obama is dead!" and a teacher clarified it wasn't the president. If further explanation followed, it didn't resonate with Xavier.
"I didn't really know what he was talking about," he says. "And frankly, I didn't really care, 'cause I had no idea."
There are more important things to this laid-back kid, such as what's for dinner or which villains he can slay in his Wii games. He'd much rather tell visitors about the modified weapons he imagines and sketches than talk about what happened on his birthday.
Comment: It is easier to build another monument than to face the truth.