When people ask me when my birthday is or when I was born, I usually tell them that I was born in September of 1989. Usually, the conversation will thankfully stop there. The reason for this is not just because I don’t like to promote it. I just don’t want to make them feel awkward by revealing that I was born on September 11.

I was born on a Monday at 8 p.m. Aside from the official time of birth, my parents told me I was birthed at 8 in the evening because my four-year-old big brother Mike was busy in the waiting room watching a new episode of “Alf.” Please recall, I was born in the tail end of the ‘80s.

I must confess that at age 11, in sixth grade, I didn’t know much about the World Trade Center prior to that fateful day. The news reports playing out the drama and tragedy of the attacks marked the first time I had ever heard of the WTC towers.

I don’t recall much about the day simply because it was all a blur to me. My classmates and I sat in our home room with our teacher, the lights dimmed low, and tried to figure out together what was going on. We sat and watched the thick billows of smoke, the plane javelining through the South Tower, and the buildings crumbling to the ground.

The next thing I remember was leaving school and reuniting with my family. We talked about the events as Mike and my parents and tried to decode, for myself and my little brother Tyler, what had happened. They wanted us to see beyond what we had gleaned from the brief snippets and television reports caught throughout that hectic day.

It’s a shameful thing to say, but the full impact and consequences of the day’s attacks were lost on me at the time. For some reason, all the explanations committed to this attack could not press upon me the impact it would have. All I could perceive that day was that this was a very weird event indeed.

I hope you don’t find me ignorant of the monumental impact that these attacks have had our country and the world. With each passing birthday, the true gravity of the incident would become clearer and more heartbreaking, and it was made heavier still by the lives lost and by the new threat presented. I cannot fathom the sheer hardship and terror that still remains within those affected by the attacks, but they will forever have my sympathy and prayers.

The question remained, however: what were we going to do for my birthday? My parents made the decision that we were going to celebrate it anyway. We went as a family to see a movie in a completely empty theater. On our way to McDonald’s for cake and presents, every gas station along the way had lines of cars stretching into the streets for fear of a gas shortage.

We still enjoyed the day together, not just to keep things positive for us as a family, but because there was nothing else we could do that day in response to those attacks. Insensitivity was not our motivation. We had simply banded together in the shadow of tragedy.