story1507.xml

story1507.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-27

Being only 16, it was a hard thing to accept that the World Trade Centers were being attacked by terrorists. It was a horrifying thing to watch on television and it must have been infinitley worse to watch firsthand, in person. This is my story.

I was a junior in high school, one of the first days of school. It takes a little getting used to after the long vacation, so stress runs high among the faculty and students while adjusting to the school season. I was walking down a flight of stairs, already late for geometry, with a friend. A teacher ran down the steps and stopped in his tracks and looked at us both.

"Did you hear a plane crashed into the Pentagon and World Trade Centers?" He said.

Of course, I didn't believe him at first. Neither did my buddy.

How wrong we were.

Walking to geometry, my buddy and I were discussing if one of the teachers had already lost his mind. It turns out he didn't.

We set foot in the room and our teacher was staring at the TV in the classroom. On it was a live video feed, showing the pentagon and World Trade Center burning.

The moment I saw that, my stomach sank. I couldn't believe I was watching the Pentagon burn. To me, it was like, "Oh come ON! The PENTAGON? No way!" But there it was, on TV. The pure horrifying scene of watching the Pentagon, one of the most highly coveted government buildings, was like a brick through glass. Every conception about safety came crashing down.

The next class was US History. How ironic.

Of course by now we were all accepting the fact that we were attacked by terrorists and starting to come out of that state of shock that had hit the entire school once the news broke. But for some reason, it wasn't worth the effort trying to ignore the fact that only a few hundred miles away people were burning alive, jumping out of buildings, and most of them didn't know why they were even put in that situtation, anyhow.

It's not every day that you have to make a choice like the people in the World Trade Centers did.

"Do I jump?"
"Do I try to escape? Is it possible?"

And I cannot help but mention the men and women on the aircraft that were being hijacked.

"Do I do what they tell me?"
"Do I try to fight?"

It's not every day, too, that one would come to the shocking realization that they will not live another 4 hours.

After the futile attempts to learn anything in history, the TV went back on.

That was a mistake.

We watched for what seemed like eternity, as the towers burned.

Then one of the towers fell.

There was discussion going on prior to the tower falling, but once it started to make it's fall towards earth, the entire school was silent.

You could hear a pin drop, you could hear a mouse, you could hear the persons heartbeat next to you.

It was a deafening kind of silence which makes everyone squirm in their seats for someone to say something. I don't think anything was said for the the remainder of that class.

Next was lunch, I remember this being interesting.

Usually lunch in highschool is filled with mindless drivel about whatever we could possibly fathom.

Not that day.

Lunch, on a normal day, is deafening. Every once in a while, it does quiet down and everyone looks around for the cause of that silence. Of course, the silence is another one of those uncomfortable moments in which the tension just builds and builds until someone says something.

Lunch was just that kind of silence, but 35 minutes instead of only 10 seconds.

Next class, Publications.

The sudents were already starting to go home, the students that drive to school had already left and were probably home by the time publications started. Parents were frantically picking up their kids, just in case there was another attack, so their children could be at home with them.

I remember wondering if there was going to be another attack, maybe an attack on DC. There was a very real chance of that happening. A few brought up the idea of DC getting nuked. At the time, it seemed very realistic that there was going to be another attack, be it Nuclear or chemical or by aircraft again. Being that Washington DC is very close to Baltimore, and the distant, although real possibility of DC being nuked, it was upsetting.

I knew then that if a nuclear weapon was detonated in DC, that Baltimore wouldn't be affected by the blast, but it would be affected by the flash of the detonation and possibly the fallout. The flash of a nuclear detonation can cause ordinary things to combust. On human skin, if directly exposed, it can cause skin to set on fire. On clothed parts, the flash would cause anywhere from first degree burns (for light colored clothing) to third degree burns (dark colored clothing). That didn't sound very nice to me.

To tell you I wasn't scared would be a lie.

When my name came over the P.A. and called me to the office, I took a second to hug my friends and tell them to get home okay.

At home, it was much like school.

That dreaded silence again.

Dinner that day was silent. I don't think anyone in my family said 5 words the entire day.

I didn't sleep that night. I think quite a few people didn't sleep that night.

It's now August 27th. I remember September 11th like it was yesterday. I will always remember what happened.

I can only wish that my kids won't have to have such a memory like this.