September 11 Digital Archive

story10493.xml

Title

story10493.xml

Source

born-digital

Media Type

story

Created by Author

yes

Described by Author

no

Date Entered

2004-03-23

911DA Story: Story

I was oblivious to everything that horrible day. I was living in the Bronx at the time and going to school at Hunter College. I was listening to the Stern show before I went to catch my bus. I left at around 8:45. I walked to the bus stop, the BX 42, and got on. I sat down and literally as I sat down I hear the drivers radio and the voice saying something about the WTC. I get to my 6 train and get on, still knowing nothing.
We pull up to the Hunter College stop and get off the train. For those who don't know the stop you don't have to go outside to get into one of the buildings, you can go right into the building from the train station. So I go in and head up to where my class is. I sit down and wait for class to start and within a minute I get three pages; 2 from my girlfriend and 1 from my mom. I look up to where the payphones are and theyre being used, I go downstairs to another set of phones and theyre being used. I go outside and find an empty phone. As Im outside I see everyone looking towards downtown. I take a look and you can see the cloud over the city. A guy has a car door open and his radio blasting. Then, probably more than an hour after the first plane hit, I heard what happend.
I go back upstairs at the school and hear about the Pentagon now. I was in total shock and disbelief. I wanted someone to pinch me so I could wake up from the nightmare. I sit back down, blank stare on my face and total disbelief. The teacher from my class shows up and says "Listen, this is bad, try to get out of the city." The only thing I thought about was my girlfriend. The radio said that they may still go for landmarks around the city. She works down the street from the Empire State Building. So I get down to the train to try and get to her and they had just roped it off. So I hoofed it from 68th to 34th.
AS I walked I thought about a lot:my girl being safe, all the people who were closer to this, all the people who were involved in it. People had their car doors open so others could listen to what was going on. For me one of the weirdest things was getting to the CBS building by FAO Schwarz. They had their window screens on with their news broadcasts. People were packed by there. They had these intense aerial views from down there. The big, black smoke cloud in the clear blue sky. Watching it on the screen and turning to my right towards downtown to see the cloud in real life was just a trip. Scared the hell out of me.
I make it to 34th and go up to her offices. I walk in and all of her co-workers let out a sigh of relief. She was apparently freaking out because she didnt hear from me. We hugged and held each other for a few minutes. I let her go and called my family who lived upstate to let them know I was okay. We hung out in the office for a few hours and tried as hard as we could to relax. After a while we hear that no plane or anything should be in the sky. So we decided to go to the TGI Friday's down the street to grab a beer or two. AS soon as we get outside we hear this low, loud plane engine over head. We all kind of freaked and looked towards the ESB and waited for a plane to hit it. Luckily it was a military jet.
We had our beers and watched more and more reports. Hoping for some good news of surviors or something along those lines. We left the place and knew we couldnt leave the city, so we just walked around. We watched people and listened to conversations. Crowds were all around vendors and lil stores that sold WTC merchandise. They knew this was the last time you'd find postcards and stuff like that with the towers not as a memorial.
Eventually at around 5 or so they had limited service out of the city. We caught a train and got back to my girl's apartment in the Bronx. We turn on the news and just watched in disbelief the events of the day. We hadnt seen the video, just pictures. At around 8 or so I couldnt keep watching it anymore. I channel surf to try and find something else. I needed to try and lighten up and relax, even Comedy Central and Cartoon Network had news on. I turn on HBO and the X-Men movie was on. So I watched that and tried to leave reality for 2 hours.
My cousin picked me up and I went back to my place in the Bronx. My dad was working that night so he swung by. I just said "I gotta go home." So I went upstate with him to escape for a few days. School was cancelled the rest of that week and the next week there was Jewish holiday so school was closed for a few more days. It was good to be home though. I saw my frineds and they welcomed me with open arms.
Everyone knows our world changed that day. Our grandparents had Pearl Harbor, our parents had the Kennedy Assassination and our generation has 9/11.

Citation

“story10493.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 10, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/10088.