back in 1997, at the beginning of their 9th season, there was a classic episode of the simpsons where they have to travel to new york city to pick up homer's abandoned car in the world trade plaza, right in between the world trade center's twin towers. in the episode there's lots of jokes and commentary about the towers, including a laundry line between them, and homer trying to find a bathroom that's open in one tower only having to go to the other one.

after 9/11/2001, there was much speculation that we would never be able to watch that episode again. in fact, i remember there was commentary at the time about how that would be a 'lost episode' that would never play in reruns. and i understood at the time about how hard that would be to watch as a comedy, before our 'innocence' was supposedly lost.

yesterday, while watching my daily 'simpsons' reruns that i catch about 3 times every day, they ran the episode. i immediately sat up realizing from the beginning of the episode which one this was, even though i hadn't seen it run since 2001. i kept thinking, am i mistaking this for another episode? are they going to make some kind of comment? are they going to try to hide the towers somehow? maybe at the end, they'll say something? but as i watched, i watched through my 2005 eyes, mixed in with my 1997 eyes, and that terrible day in 2001 seemed to be another issue now. it's not that i had forgotten 2001 or how hurt i was, but more that i had grown since then, that time had helped make it ok to see this episode again, that while there's still so much aftermath and problems since then and while we will never forget 2001, it was ok to regain some innocence again. and it was ok for this episode to be shown again on television, without any post-2001 comment, and it was ok for us all to watch it, and laugh again.