Today marks 25 years since September 11, 2001.

A quarter-century has passed, but for those of us old enough to remember that day, there are certain moments that still feel like they happened yesterday.

I remember exactly where I was.

I was a freshman at West Virginia University. I was 19 years old, playing basketball, going to class and basically living the life of a college kid. Jay-Z had just dropped The Blueprint and Fabolous had released Ghetto Fabolous. At that age, those were the types of things I was excited about.

Then I walked out of my dorm on my way to class and everything changed. I saw people gathered around the television in the lobby. Everybody was staring at the screen in disbelief. At first, I didn’t completely understand what was happening. Then, while we were watching, the second plane hit the South Tower.

That’s when everybody knew something was seriously wrong.

The entire atmosphere changed. People were scared. People were crying. There was confusion everywhere because nobody knew what was coming next. Then reports started coming in about another hijacked plane, and eventually we learned that United Airlines Flight 93 was over Pennsylvania.

Being in Morgantown made that hit differently. Pittsburgh wasn’t far away. At the time, nobody standing around that television knew where the plane was headed or how many more attacks could be coming.

For a bunch of college students, it felt like something out of a movie — except it was real.

One thing I’ll always remember is hearing Katie Couric’s voice on NBC that morning. You could hear the emotion. Everybody covering it was trying to process what they were witnessing just like the rest of America.

WVU canceled classes. Basketball practice was canceled too. And I’ll admit something that shows just how young and unaware I was at that exact moment: initially, I was happy.

I’m 19 years old thinking, “Damn, we got a free day. No class. No practice.”

I didn’t understand the magnitude yet. None of us did. But as the hours passed and more information came out, reality started setting in. This wasn’t just something happening on television.

Nearly 3,000 innocent people would never return home to their families.

People went to work that morning expecting an ordinary Tuesday and never came home. Passengers boarded airplanes believing they were traveling to another city and never reached their destinations. Firefighters, police officers, paramedics and other first responders ran toward danger while thousands of others desperately tried to escape it.

At the World Trade Center, people lost husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and friends. At the Pentagon, more families suffered unimaginable losses.

And aboard Flight 93, passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers before the plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. For those of us from Western Pennsylvania, that part of September 11 will always hit especially close to home.

Twenty-five years later, I also think it’s important to remember what this anniversary should actually be about.

Every year, especially because of social media, September 11 can turn into arguments about politics, government conspiracies and people’s personal theories about what happened.

There are 364 other days to argue. September 11 should be about the victims.

It should be about the innocent people who lost their lives and the families who have spent the last 25 years living without them. It should be about the first responders who demonstrated unbelievable courage. It should also be about the people who survived but carried the physical and emotional effects of that day with them for the rest of their lives.

For younger generations, 9/11 is something they learn about in history class. That’s wild for me to think about.

For my generation, it isn’t history from a textbook.

We watched it happen. We remember where we were. We remember the confusion. We remember seeing that second plane. We remember the towers falling. We remember not knowing what was going to happen next. And many of us remember how different America felt afterward.

Twenty-five years is a long time.

People have been born, grown up and become adults without ever knowing what America was like before September 11, 2001.

But those of us who lived through that day have a responsibility to keep its human story alive. Not the politics. Not the arguments.

The people.

The nearly 3,000 lives that were taken. The families who never got their loved ones back. The first responders who ran toward those buildings when every instinct tells a human being to run the other way. And the passengers and crew of Flight 93 whose final moments unfolded right here in Pennsylvania.

I was a 19-year-old freshman at WVU that morning who walked out of his dorm thinking about class, basketball and some new albums. By the end of the day, none of that seemed important anymore.

Twenty-five years later, I can still picture everybody standing around that television.

Some moments never leave you. September 11, 2001, is one of them.

Never forget.