story10310.xml

story10310.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-01-08

I was 16 on September 11, I had never even been to the United States. It's weird, because I didn't know anyone, or see it firsthand, but I think about it all the time. People don't talk about it very much at home any more, but I think about it all the time. I think it really affected me; I used to forget to lock our front door in Winnipeg, but now I'm very paranoid about that, and about a lot of other things. Everytime I get on a plane I think morbidly about it- or if someone I love gets on a plane.

I wouldn't have known about it actually, if I hadn't been on time for my bus that morning, usually I wasn't. My best friend had a weird expression on her face, she asked me if I had seen the news that morning, and I answered no. She told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre. I asked if everyone was okay, and she said "I don't think so, they don't know what's going on." When we got to school, we went to the library to find our teachers crying in front of a TV. At that time, the second plane was crashing into the tower. We watched the plane explode into the building over and over and over again on the news, they kept replaying the tape. When I see it now, or a cartoon of it, I find it very repulsive. I had taken American history the previous school year; it was required of an international higher level curriculum my best friend and I were taking- my American history teacher was so angry. The two of us turned around and took the bus home. Being on that bus ride was odd. Nobody else knew what was going on. I thanked God that I was Canadian so many times on the bus ride.

We went to her house and watched CNN. We saw the close footage of people jumping out of the tower as it collapsed, there was footage on some channels of peoples' bodies on the ground. I think it's since been archived. We cried and cried all day for all of the people. By 1:00PM, we were crying for the Arab nations. I cried the hardest when they started reporting on the hijaked planes that were crashing into fields.

I worked in a book store at the time, and that night I had a short shift. There was an hour at the end of the night where nobody came in. One man did come in at the end of the night though. I guess his plane had been cancelled. He approached the cash desk and pointed to the special edition Winnipeg Sun we had at the desk and desperately said "that's my home".

I prayed to God not to let there be a world war, and I prayed and thanked him that my boyfriend was alright, and my mom and my dad, and my birds, and everything and everybody. And I prayed for the husbands, wives, parents, siblings, friends and children of all of the people who said they'd come home but went back to help. I think about it very often.