story11230.xml
Title
story11230.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2004-12-14
911DA Story: Story
'I wish it were Friday.'
I thought to myself as I stared at the ceiling of my room.
This was the only thought on my mind as I wake up on yet another boring Tuesday. As usual, I reluctantly got out of bed at around 7:50, did my morning routine of getting dressed and grabbing some cereal, and I was on the bus by 8:10. How was I to know that at the moment, thousands of Americans were about to lose their lives, while the lives of everyone else in the nation was about to be changed forever?
Everything was average. From 9:15, I spent a 90 minutes in my first period gym class, doing routine warm-ups and exercising as usual. Then class change bell would ring later on, which in my case signaled my shift to my World History II class, where I would spend 30 minutes in class before we would break for a half- hour lunch, before finishing World History over another hour. As I always did after the intial 30 minutes of my class, I remember sitting down with my lunch buddy Alex, and I tried to carry over a conversation we had from the last time we talked. However, he seemed too excited about something to talk about the usual subjects of videogames and anime. Instead, he started asking me question that I thought to be quite unusual. Later it seems, he questions turned out to be unusual do to the fact that they truly were one of kind.
"Hey did you hear?'
"Hear about what?"
"About the twin towers?"
"Huh?'
"They got the twin towers. People are dying."
"???...Bastards."
I had no idea what were these towers Alex was talking about, or who this "they" he was referring to. I assumed that he must have been referring to some sort of fiction or making some sort of joke that I didn't understand, and in turn, responded sarcastically as such. But then Alex started to talk as if some sort-of a plane accident on the news was related to kids being pulled early out of school by parents, and I can remember how clueless I felt a as I left lunch to return to class. Looking around during the six minutes I had to return to class, I still remember that feeling of being the only one around who was missing something important. That is, until returning to my World History class, where the teacher decided to spend the rest of our hour by simply having us watch the news.
What I saw on the screen I could only describe as surreal. For me, it was difficult to comprehend what I was seeing. This is not a recording, but an event that is actually happening right now? I could see my anxious fellow classmates were looking around, some as lost for words as I was, other were asking questions, while still others cried at the scene. But just what was I supposed to feel watching this tragedy unfold I wondered? All I could remember was even more confusion as I gazed at the smoke coming from the WTC.
However, I finally found a answer to my stunned feelings, as they were to be soon replaced by unsettling disturbance, once I had learned that the Pentagon too had been hit. The Pentagon, I thought, the very same Pentagon only 30 minutes away from my home, had come under attack. Of all the cities in this country, an attack had to come to the city nearest me. Unlike
New York
, I realized,
Washington
D.C.
was a place I had actually been to, and one of its great landmark buildings, a building I had actually seen, was on fire, and there was no telling what further damage was to come to the capitol. What was happening on a global scale, was hitting me on the local level, and I found that revelation most unnerving. But at least I could begin to understand one thing knowing how local this event was. An understanding, of just how significant this day would become, being the first time since 1812 that
Washington
was hit by a foreign power.
As I realized that today was to be a very special Tuesday, there was only one appropriated action to take as I watched with my class the infamous event unfold. And that action, was to check my simply check my watch, and do my best to memorize what I saw:
TUES. 9-11
11:33 am
I thought to myself as I stared at the ceiling of my room.
This was the only thought on my mind as I wake up on yet another boring Tuesday. As usual, I reluctantly got out of bed at around 7:50, did my morning routine of getting dressed and grabbing some cereal, and I was on the bus by 8:10. How was I to know that at the moment, thousands of Americans were about to lose their lives, while the lives of everyone else in the nation was about to be changed forever?
Everything was average. From 9:15, I spent a 90 minutes in my first period gym class, doing routine warm-ups and exercising as usual. Then class change bell would ring later on, which in my case signaled my shift to my World History II class, where I would spend 30 minutes in class before we would break for a half- hour lunch, before finishing World History over another hour. As I always did after the intial 30 minutes of my class, I remember sitting down with my lunch buddy Alex, and I tried to carry over a conversation we had from the last time we talked. However, he seemed too excited about something to talk about the usual subjects of videogames and anime. Instead, he started asking me question that I thought to be quite unusual. Later it seems, he questions turned out to be unusual do to the fact that they truly were one of kind.
"Hey did you hear?'
"Hear about what?"
"About the twin towers?"
"Huh?'
"They got the twin towers. People are dying."
"???...Bastards."
I had no idea what were these towers Alex was talking about, or who this "they" he was referring to. I assumed that he must have been referring to some sort of fiction or making some sort of joke that I didn't understand, and in turn, responded sarcastically as such. But then Alex started to talk as if some sort-of a plane accident on the news was related to kids being pulled early out of school by parents, and I can remember how clueless I felt a as I left lunch to return to class. Looking around during the six minutes I had to return to class, I still remember that feeling of being the only one around who was missing something important. That is, until returning to my World History class, where the teacher decided to spend the rest of our hour by simply having us watch the news.
What I saw on the screen I could only describe as surreal. For me, it was difficult to comprehend what I was seeing. This is not a recording, but an event that is actually happening right now? I could see my anxious fellow classmates were looking around, some as lost for words as I was, other were asking questions, while still others cried at the scene. But just what was I supposed to feel watching this tragedy unfold I wondered? All I could remember was even more confusion as I gazed at the smoke coming from the WTC.
However, I finally found a answer to my stunned feelings, as they were to be soon replaced by unsettling disturbance, once I had learned that the Pentagon too had been hit. The Pentagon, I thought, the very same Pentagon only 30 minutes away from my home, had come under attack. Of all the cities in this country, an attack had to come to the city nearest me. Unlike
New York
, I realized,
Washington
D.C.
was a place I had actually been to, and one of its great landmark buildings, a building I had actually seen, was on fire, and there was no telling what further damage was to come to the capitol. What was happening on a global scale, was hitting me on the local level, and I found that revelation most unnerving. But at least I could begin to understand one thing knowing how local this event was. An understanding, of just how significant this day would become, being the first time since 1812 that
Washington
was hit by a foreign power.
As I realized that today was to be a very special Tuesday, there was only one appropriated action to take as I watched with my class the infamous event unfold. And that action, was to check my simply check my watch, and do my best to memorize what I saw:
TUES. 9-11
11:33 am
Collection
Citation
“story11230.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 19, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/18874.