Most people can recall where they were as the news spread and images of the devastation filled their television screens.

As for me, I missed September 11th completely.

Not literally, obviously. But while most of the country watched the horrors of that day unfold in real time, I was sequestered in a testing room, proctoring exams in a controlled environment with almost no contact with the outside world.

At some point during a break, someone got a message on his beeper that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

We all assumed it was a small plane, maybe some sort of freak accident that hopefully hadn’t badly injured or killed anyone.

Then we went back to work without a second thought.

As the day went on, none of us had any idea that another plane had hit the second tower. Or that the Pentagon had been attacked. Or that another plane had gone down in Pennsylvania. Or even that the towers themselves were gone.

We were focused on the task at hand. We had no clue.

Late that afternoon, I dismissed the testers and headed back to my office. I was alone, so I turned on the radio, something I typically did when finishing up for the day.

That's when I started hearing reports about what happened, and I realized that whatever we'd assumed that morning wasn't even remotely close.

I turned on the television. The first thing I saw was the smoking rubble that used to be the Twin Towers.

Like everyone who saw those images, I struggled to make sense of it all. Having just come back from being sequestered, I felt disjointed, like I’d accidentally entered into some horrible alternate reality.

I just stood there, alone in that office, trying to comprehend the enormity what had just happened.

I remember thinking, are more attacks coming? What do we do now?

And then my thoughts went to my little girl, safely at her grandparents’ house while I worked. She’d just turned one year old two months earlier; all I could think was, what kind of world did I just bring her into?

I raced home to her.

In the days that followed, we saw community.

People lined up to give blood. Flags were waving everywhere. Countries around the world expressed their sorrows and solidarity with us.

And yes, there was still anger, fear, and a lot of ugliness. But there was also a sense of unity I had never experienced before, and unfortunately, I haven’t seen much of since.

25 years hasn’t made 9/11 feel like ordinary history to those of us who lived through it, even those of us who watched in total safety hundreds of miles away.

Our grandparents remembered Pearl Harbor. Our parents remembered where they were when Kennedy was killed. I remember watching the Challenger explode on live television.

Every generation seems to have those defining ‘where were you and how did your world completely change’ moments.

For me, 9/11 will always be the day I walked into a room in one America and, hours later, entered a vastly different one.

I think we should still show the footage.

An entire generation now knows 9/11 as a date in history. But those who watched it happen remember that those planes and buildings were full of people just like us, starting their day like any other.

They got up and went to work, or headed out to the airport. And just like us, they were probably focused on mundane things like deadlines and reports, or travel itineraries and carry-on baggage.

None of them knew the horrors that were coming.

For thousands of them, it would be the last day of their lives.

We don't need to relive the horrors of that day, but 'never forget' gets reduced to a slogan if you don't remember why in the first place.

And that's what that footage remembers for us.

Real people died that day. It was senseless and brutal and indiscriminate, and shook most of us to the core.

But I think we should show what came next, too.

Show those first responders running straight into hell to save as many lives as they could. Show the blood donation lines, the vigils and flags.

Show strangers helping strangers and the support from around the world.

Because if we’re going to remember what human beings were capable of at their worst, we should remember what they were capable of at their best, too.

We promised we would never forget.