story11723.xml

story11723.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-08-13

On Sept. 11, 2001 I was off work that day and at home with my two small children (ages 2 and 1 at that time). I was doing the normal morning routine of cleaning up from breakfast and starting some laundry. The kids were watching a video tape of Barney and the tape had ended. Brittany, my oldest, wanted to watch it again so I started to rewind the tape. As the tape was rewinding, the tv went back to the normal broadcast mode and the first image that I saw on the screen was that of the first tower with smoke coming out of a very large hole. I instantly turned up the volume and began hearing of a small plane that had crashed into the tower. Just hearing that a plane had crashed into the tower was shock enough, but then I saw the second plane live on tv hit the second tower. I called a friend of mine and asked if he was watching tv. He was going through the same morning routine with his girls and hadn't seen anything. After turning on his tv, we both just talked on the phone tring to make sense of what was going on. I actually had panic setting in and was starting to worry about what was happening to our country. After talking with my friend, I can remember sitting in front of the tv the whole day. I called the Dr.'s office where my wife was at waiting for an appointment and told her to come home. I just didn't want to be alone. The only other thing that sticks out in my mind about that day was later on in the afternoon I decided to go out for a drive to calm my nerves. As I approached a popular gas station in town, I noticed that there were cars backed up for blocks and I couldn't understand why. I saw police cars and uniformed officers out on the street directing traffic and I assumed that it was because of an accident. I then realized that it was due to the lines at the gas pumps because of the fear of gas prices going way up. That night my wife and I with our children fueled up our vehicles and went to the grocery store and bought about a months worth of groceries and water just to be prepared for the worst.