Life and 9/11

This might be three days late, but I've been thinking of my 9/11 experiences a lot recently and what my life would be like if it didn't happen.
The day it happened, I was sitting on my parent's bed at about 8 o'clock flipping through the channels, hoping to watch some looney toons. I worked the remote vigorously, as the same image appeared on every channel. I couldn't really make out what it was. It seemed to be a giant cinder block that had smoke coming out of it. Was this a joke? I laughed audibly, until my dad rushed into the room. He told me that a plane had crashed into the world trade center. I didn't know what that was, until he explained to me that it was a large building in New York City. And then it hit me: wasn't my mom on a plane right now? She had taken a business trip to New York and Burlington, VT and left from the Burlington airport this morning. I was dumbfounded. Could my mom be in the plane (or now, planes) that had crashed in the towers or the pentagon? I started to weep. I still couldn't even grasp the thought of my own mother, dead.
Luckily, an hour later, my mother called the house saying that she was about to walk onto her plane, when the airport shut down and was forced to rent a car and drive to Chicago.
That might have been one of the scariest moments in my life, however, I can't even remember life customs beforehand. I mean, I was young, so that could be a factor, but does anyone (especially my age) remember a time where it didn't take at least an hour to get through airport security? Or remember a time before our nation was at war? A time where our National Security threat level was below an orange? Or even a time before Salem-witch-trial-like accusations of being a terrorist occurred? I certainly don't.