story679.xml

story679.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-05-28

It was a normal school day of dragging myself out of bed and onto the bus that took me to school. Not at all was I with thought that perhaps today would in some way make history. A night full of homework had kept me awake all night so that today would be so tiring that I hardly felt aware of what was happening around me. Though, a disturbing event had happened to fall on this day that was not the nice little shake back to reality for me.
I was walking on my way to 3rd period English while dragging my feet and not looking forward to the usual lecture by our teacher. Once I had entered the room the expression on my face of pure tiredness had changed with wonder and curiosity. The teacher and a group of the students in my class were huddled around underneath the television. I noticed it was a type of news channel and wonder what was so interesting that attracted a student?s attention. All of their faces seemed to be of shock. Once I had joined them at the television I saw news reporters in extreme alarm over something.
Then that is when I saw it; there were two very tall buildings in which one had smoke coming from it. Just then, a plane came into the frame of the television and was headed right for the towers. It seemed to be something right out of an action packed movie. What was going on? My mouth dropped as I noticed ?LIVE? in the corner of the television and saw the plane drive itself right into the tower. Fire and smoke had surrounded the plain and where it hit. A while later is when the towers collapsed.
A great wall of smoke and debris was seen from the ground below and people ran in panic. It seemed a sea of people were flowing in one direction. Some had cell phones in their ears, some were crying, and others had a look of shock in their face as if they weren?t sure of what just happened. Maybe they were just wondering when this dream would stop and they would wake up. If only it were that.
This place on the television was the World Trade Center and the buildings were called the Twin Towers. In all honesty, I had never heard of this place and never knew it had existed. That is why to me, it had seemed unreal. As time went on and it all sank in, I realized that I had witnessed something that was sure to go down in history. This is something that would be in future history books! It seemed amazing I suppose. Though with thousands dead it was quite tragic. Who would want to do such a thing? I always saw the United States as a place where nothing from the outside world could harm us. Boy, was that misunderstood.
The people behind it all were the Taliban of Afghanistan. Apparently it had been a suicide terrorist attack. Once again I knew little of this place or this group of people. Ironically we had been studying them a little in Global Studies before the attack. All I knew was that Osama Bin Laden was a man up to no good and happen to be the leader of this terrorist group called the Taliban. The planes had been hijacked by some of his group and in a suicide mission they crashed them into the building. This was all for their Muslim god, Allah. It is crazy that a god would want harm towards others. This too seems like a misunderstanding on their part.
Much patriotism increased throughout the United States. This loss impacted the nation greatly. Many wanted Osama Bin Laden dead and even more, all the Muslims dead. True, I felt great anger towards Bin Laden for his actions cost us much. However, to take the life of those who had nothing to do with hate against Americans is most certainly wrong. Hate and violence only bring more hate and violence. No good comes out of any of it.