Happened Day Born

Life of Ohio boy born on 9/11 shows new normal - US news

August 11, 2011 — COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — 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.

Of the 13,238 children born in the United States that Sept. 11, Greg and Nikki Montjoy's first child was among the earliest, clocking in at Mt. Carmel St. Ann's Hospital when the day was 67 minutes old. They were first-time parents, unsure of what to expect, but found it odd later that morning when no relatives visited and the staff started to seem evasive and limit the infant's time outside the nursery. Finally, a nurse urged his mother to wake her sleeping husband and turn on the television.

Nikki Montjoy cradled her infant as she watched images of the smoking twin towers. The events had prompted a lockdown at the hospital, blocking the Montjoys' visitors, she said. Once allowed in, the family crowded into her room, shut off the TV and turned their attention to Xavier.

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