story10560.xml

story10560.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-04-28

It was a normal day, wake up at 6 in the morning and get ready for another day of my junior year in high school. Everything just seemed normal, nothing was out of the ordinary or did not feel right, and it was just perfect. I got to school and the bell rang, I was sitting in Math class doing some problems, when the inner come buzzed over the school, usually this happened when the office was trying to communicate with the classroom or there was an emergency. My teacher, Ms. Hatcher silenced the class as our principal; Mr. Sites said something that would put us into shock and denial for hours. He said to us ?The World Trade Centers in New York City have been hit, please turn on your televisions and watch the broadcast.? At this point, we were all crying or upset and moving around. Ms. Hatcher turned on the television and watched as the second plane hit, and we all gasped in disbelief that someone would hate us this much to attack our nation?s symbol. The news started another story, there was another plane hijacked at Dulles Airport headed for the Pentagon, this started another catastrophe. I just sat there, not really knowing how to act or what to say, I just sat there in silence, soaking in all the news coverage. This all seemed like a huge mistake, I mean who would hate the world?s super-power. This time just never seemed to end; I remember that for days after it happened we watched the same footage of the crashes, which made it sink in even more. I called my mom to check on her and she was scared, her voice quivering over the line, she wanted me to stay at school. My dad had been at the pentagon that day, but he was leaving right as the plane hit the section he was working on. Maybe something told him to leave, but it was perfect timing. The clock just seemed to tick louder, but when the towers fell, I was not in the room, I heard everyone in the class crying, I saw teachers running about the hallways, I scurried back into the room and saw debris and dust all over the place, people running from the crashed buildings, it was horrific, like a scary movie. I just wondered about the people who did not make it out, what their last thoughts were, who was holding them, what they said to their kids that morning when they left for work, what their husbands or wives did when they heard what was happening, it was all just moving so fast. It was like playing with a flipbook but you could not control how fast you flipped the pages, things were just happening and no one could do anything about it. Then, I was thinking about the men and women who went back into the towers to help people and the people who were trying to warn others, why did they have to be stuck in there when they fell? They were doing something good. For an instant, my heart skipped a beat, and I found myself crying for those people and I could not stop. I did not even know them, but I cried for them, for us. My father called my mom to tell her that I was to come home immediately because he was scared that the hijackers might try something crueler and attack a school or something, so I came home and watched the news with my grandmother. Each time a plane hit I knew she was looking at the terrified stare on my face, I was glued to the television for days after that watching to see if they had found out anything new.
I remember returning back to school a few days later, and the teachers would sit at their desks with their hands folded and just stare at the emotionless looks on our faces. They would always ask, ?Do you all want to talk about what happened?? No one ever answered, we just sat there in silence, and I would have to say those were the times when teachers could get through a lesson without yelling at someone to quiet down. I would sit and wonder some odd things about who had the heart to do this? Who would kill themselves to kill thousands of innocent human beings? Who would be so bold to sit there and try to downsize our pride? I was so angry, but the time I remember the most was a year later.
I was sitting on the edge of my bathtub blow-drying my hair when Hot 99.5 played a song in memory of the men and women who died in the towers and in the pentagon. A little girl was saying a prayer for her father, as I write this now I cannot help but cry; those words the child spoke were so real and so emotional. I cried so hard that day, I went to school and we had a moment of silence in remembrance and I just cannot stop remembering how horrific that day was, I was so fooled by war and acts of violence, I was just a kid.