Memory is a strange thing. Some moments are burned into your consciousness — like first dates, winning the big championship, or that time in grade school when I made the music teacher run out of the room crying — while others just fade away, as if they never happened, like in the Jim Carrey movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

And as I sat down at my computer this morning, I couldn’t remember what I had for dinner last night. But I could tell you exactly what I was doing five years ago today.

I was working the morning shift at a gas station — a job I took because I knew the manager, I needed to pay college tuition, and it was flexible enough to work around my course schedule. It was slow that day, so I went outside to straighten things up. As someone walked by to pay, he said, “Did you hear? A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center?” A little bit later another customer said, “The other tower just got hit!” When the Pentagon was hit, it was simply, “We’re at war.”

There was so much confusion that morning. We didn’t have a TV or radio, so we relied on the conversations from customers to tell us what was happening. People were talking about a hijacked plane headed toward us in Cleveland. That ended up being United 93. A co-worker’s father was flying out of Boston that morning. He didn’t know if he was still alive.

When we heard the towers collapsed, there was just silence.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to get to a TV, to see for myself that this was really happening. Like all of us, I was angry, and afraid.

Soon the line for gas lined up back into the street. A lot of businesses, especially those in New York, were closed by emergency. This caused our credit card system to shut down, so we had to process every transaction by hand. Most people were patient. I will never forgive those who weren’t.

While we were scrambling to get the lines moving and direct traffic, so people could get home to their families, there were more than a few people who came into the store to play their daily lottery numbers, as they did every day, like nothing had happened. Since the lottery system was also shut down, they complained, “Now what am I supposed to do?”

As far as we knew at the time, maybe 10,000 or 15,000 people lost their lives in those towers. This was the worst moment in the history of our country, and these people could not look beside themselves for one moment to think about the families that were shattered, the police officers and firefighters digging through rubble desperately looking for survivors. I didn’t understand whether it was arrogance or ignorance that made them so callous, but at that moment, I had never been so mad at anyone in my life.

A few days later, I wrote my weekly column for my campus newspaper. I headlined it, “When Terror Strikes, Americans Buy Lottery Tickets.” I think I was shaking the entire time I wrote it. I still have a bit of that feeling deep inside as I write this today.

Yet I was so blinded by the few self-centered idiots, I didn’t see the customers — strangers all — talking to each other, helping each other out, hugging and crying together. I didn’t see how many people took their filled up cars and drove to their church to pray, or lined up to give blood. I didn’t see that the only thing in greater demand than gas that day was American flags. Because at that moment, we were all one. To hell with the few lottery stragglers. We were connected. And we wanted a symbol to rally around.

A lot can change in five years. I graduated college, got married, found a career and had a baby. Maybe you changed careers, started your own company, moved across the country or had a child or grandchild.

From the time, there are probably whole months that you’ve not forgotten, but have faded into the back of your mind. But I’ll bet you still remember exactly where you were on 9/11.

Today, I’m not asking you to dwell on what was lost that day. Just remember. Don’t focus on the negative, like the nutcases who despite all the evidence to the contrary, believe 9/11 is a government conspiracy. Think of the positive we can do. Be patient. Be kind to a stranger. Say a prayer. Give blood. And hang that American flag proudly. Because no matter how much changes in five years, we are still one.