The date snuck up on me this year. I'm not sure how.

It started like a normal Thursday. After handing off my son, I sat down with a bowl of generic cereal and popped on the TV to see what was happening in the world.

Tiny as the type was, the date on the channel guide stuck out: 9/11. Whoa.

Most years, it would be impossible to miss that landmark date coming. If it didn't come up in conversation, the wall-to-wall news coverage would remind you. Or the infomercials for those cheesy commemorative coins where the towers lift up.

That stuff was less pervasive this year. Could be I just noticed it less. Either way, it bothered me.

Maybe the relatives of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are right. Several of them have worried aloud that they're the only ones who still remember vividly what that day was like.

Even if the event itself has been pushed to the back of our memory, though, it's hard to imagine we've forgotten what it meant. Eight years after my dad's death, I think about him only now and then, but his imprint on my life becomes clearer to me every year.

Same goes for Sept. 11. Deep down, we still understand that was much bigger than the little things we grumble about. Thankfully we're still free to grumble.

Residents of Caledonia, Union Grove and other spots in the county are free to worry if any garbage that was supposed to be picked up Tuesday was still baking out there Thursday because of the garbage strike.

Brewers fans are free to worry about being close enough to touch playoff baseball. Although, considering how easily their National League rivals could rip it out of their mitts, I'd play it cool a couple of more weeks.

Wisconsinites are free to worry what Mama Nature has in store this winter after bingeing and purging rain throughout the warm months.

Voters are free to worry that, if their candidate for state Assembly or for Congress gets trounced in November, the world will end. (It won't. As extreme as both sides sound, they've all got to compromise to get anything done).

Homeowners are free to worry that something that sounds like a boxed Kraft product ultimately owns their mortgage. Pass the Freddie Mac, please.

West Racine residents are free to worry about twerps breaking in and taking our stuff. And about the opportunistic security companies going around trying to capitalize.

Cheeseheads are free to worry that Brett Favre will win just as many Super Bowl rings with the Jets as he did here. So far, the alert level on that one is low.

Parents of Racine Unified minority students are free to worry if new superintendent James Shaw can turn the ship around in time to reach those kids. It's got a wide turning radius.

Families of local National Guard members who just got called up are free to worry about their well-being. There's nothing little about that.

Today, the channel guide reads 9/12, and in our brains the images of Sept. 11, 2001, are already being replaced by more ordinary and pressing ones. And that's OK. We know where to find them when it's important.

Mike Moore's column runs each Friday. He can be reached at (262) 631-1724 or

mike.moore@lee.net