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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/DamienLink on 2025-08-11 09:56:21+00:00.

This was not Today but I remember it very regularly and today it came to mind again. So:

I was about 8 when I first learned about 9/11. I’m not from the US, so it wasn’t something we talked about much in school, and until then I’d never even heard of it.

One day in September (Personally, I assume it was on the exact day, just about a decade later, given the news report of it that day) 9/11 was shown in the news, talking about what happened then. I asked my grandpa about it. He told me how he’d seen it on TV waay back when it happened — it was afternoon where we live, and he described watching the news. He also told me, that most people remember where they were that day or when they found out about it.

Well, I remember walking outside afterward, into the big empty fields next to my house, and just… thinking. Little 8-year-old me stood there, contemplating life, imagining my grandparents sitting in their living room, watching TV.

Here’s the thing: my child brain didn’t really separate “the day I learned about something” from “the day it actually happened.” In my mind, the memory of standing in that field was the day 9/11 happened.

So for literal YEARS afterward, if someone mentioned 9/11, I would confidently say,

„Oh yeah, I remember where I was when that happened.“

And I did remember… except I was remembering the day I learned about it, several years after it happened, and also after I was born.

No one corrected me for the longest time (in the End a Teacher did, in front of the Class). Now, every so often, I remember Kid-me solemnly recounting “my memory” of 9/11 to people who absolutely knew I wasn’t alive then, and I want to crawl into the nearest hole and stay there forever.

TL;DR: I told people I remember where I was when 9/11 happens, even tho I wasn’t even alive then.