story11778.xml

story11778.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-08-28

I was in eleventh grade that year, and I found out just before my second period class. In the hall the teachers were talking really queitly and worried to eachother but I didn't pay much attention. When the teacher came in and told us that a plane had crashed into the Trade Center building in New York, I thought it was some kind of weird game to show us what it would be like if we had lived during some big event like Pearl harbor or something. How history is more than just dates and names, but how it really affects people who live then. In retrospect that made no sense, because it was a study hall and why would she want to teach us something about history? But I kept waiting for the "just kidding" that never came. Everyone was quiet and weird after, but wasn't until they told us over the intercom that the pentagon had been attacked that I really got it. It wasn't a game, or even an accident; we'd been ATTACKED.

The rest of the day we tried to talk our various teachers into letting us watch or listen to the news, and most agreed. I still remember how queit we all were in English while the old radio the teacher had brought in crackled with static and people called in to the station to rant about how we "ought to nuke the whole middle east." It scared me almost as much as the attacks themselves, hearing people talk like that and knowing that there was a war coming.

When I got home I went right to the tv and watched the news until my parents got home, and then we went out to eat because no one felt like cooking. It was surreal; there were huge lines of cars at all the gas stations because people thought the oil was going to get cut off or something, and at the restaurant total strangers would talk to us about it because everyone was thinking about the same thing.

After dinner when we got back home, I went right back to watching the news. It was pretty much the same thing over and over, except when they showed a bunch of people--government officials and representatives I think, I don't remember very well anymore--all standing together and crying and singing "God Bless America." That image sticks out in my mind the most out of everything that happened that day. I didn't know the lyrics back then, but I tried to sing along anyway. It was dark and they were outside, with the world seemingly crumbling around them--around us--and it felt more like a prayer than a song. That song still makes me cry, sometimes.