story5293.xml

story5293.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I remember I'd just been joking with a friend of mine when I walked into third period and saw my teacher with a look on his face that I'd never seen there before. It was somewhere between anger and fascination. The radio was on in the back corner of the room, as it usually was, so my teacher had been one of the first in the school to hear about the attacks. I dropped my books in my usual seat and listened to the radio and the nervous chatter in the classroom for a moment. I surprised myself by thinking first of my brother (whom I usually think of as an annoying guy I have to deal with whether I want to or not). He lives and goes to college in Manhattan. I knew that both his appartment and his school where not really near the southern tip of the island, but I still thought of him first.

My next thought was my mother and our standing family rule to check in at a time like that. I asked my teacher if I could run over to the payphone now, beat the rush when the rest of the school found out. I sprinted across the school, dialed so fast I almost screwed up my own home phone number. I had a short conversation with my mom, who told me that my brother had checked in by email and that he had actually stood on the roof of one of his school buildings and seen the second plane hit. My mom thanked me for checking in and I told her I had to go because other students were already starting to gravitate towards the phones. I knew my family was safe and I wanted to give the others a chance to call home.

The rest of that day everyone was in a daze. The administration refused to pass on official information, for fear of scaring us, I suppose, and most of the classrooms did not have radios or televisions. The result was wild rumors flying all over the place. The Golden Gate Bridge had been hit. The White House was blown up. Somebody bombed the Pentagon. As period after period passed the rumors got worse and more and more kids were signed out to be taken home by their parents. I even know a few seniors who just hopped in their cars and left. I don't think anyone blamed them.

A certain section of students roamed the hallways randomly yelling such pithy, inspiring, and educated phrases as "NUKE 'EM ALL!" "JUST NUKE THE BASTARDS!" and "KILL ALL ARABS!" While I may have agreed with the basic sentiment of anger, there were times that day and in the following weeks that I wanted to throw textbooks at some of those kids. I suppose maybe that was their way of dealing with some of the fear, though.

The history teacher who's classroom I had first heard about the attacks in continued to make the current issues part of the class discussions. We debated the "Nuke 'em" idea and the implications that the attacks would have on personal freedoms. I found that the discussions were a wonderful way of sorting out many of my own feelings on the subject.

At home, my little sister told me the story of how her school administrators (at the local gradeschool) had misinformed the students to the point at which they were panicked and even more scared. (That principal was someone else I wanted to throw a textbook at.) We watched the news for about four hours solid, my dad spending much of his time in front of the TV along with the rest of us. Halfway through our fifth straight hour, while I was making a poor attempt at homework, I suddenly couldn't stand to watch or listen to the news any more. I litteraly screamed at my dad to turn the TV off. He agreed with me and that was that for the night. For the next few days we did watch the news, but not as much. None of us could really handle watching that footage over and over and over and over again . . . so we turned the TV off.

This past year has gone by almost without my noticing it. This may be a function of my becoming a senior in high school, as I've heard that becoming a senior seems to happen to you almost before you even make it into high school in the first place, but I think it has something to do with a shift in my focus from obsessing so much about college and life after college back to the life I am living now. I went and joined the marching band and the choir, two things I'd always meant to do but never quite got around to. I begged and pleaded for a flying lesson for my 17th birthday because flying has always been my great dream and I wanted to make sure I did it. I consciously decided to make sure I hugged my mom and my dad and my sister and even my annoying brother more often. Maybe it was leftover fear from the anthrax scares and the treat of a followup attack, or maybe it was just a heightened awareness of my own mortality in general. Whichever, it definitely changed me. And I think that change may have been for the better.