lc_story192.xml

lc_story192.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-01-05

I was still in bed asleep. I got a phone call from my best friend and I remember getting mad at him for waking me up 15 minutes before my alarm would have. He quickly told me to turn on the tv, I asked him what channel, he said any would do. Videos were replaying of the destruction taking place in New York. "Another one crashed into the Pentagon," my best friend told me, "but they don't know if it's related to the one in New York." Not knowing how serious it was yet having just woken up, my first thought was if classes would be canceled at the university I attend. We hung up the phones. Not five minutes later I called him back screaming into the phone "another plane hit the other tower!" That's when I knew that this was serious. I decided not to ditch school even with all the chaos happened. I listened to the radio the whole way there to learn more. Every radio station had the same thing. My professor carried on like nothing was happening and I sometimes wonder if he knew what was going on at the time. I listened to the radio on the way home and they were still doing news up dates. I took my mom to the commissary at Ft. Bliss and there were only a handful of people in there. When I got home I watched the news all night in hopes of finding out more info. I wanted to know who did this, why they did it, and why the US didn't know this was going to happen.

I just remember not feeling normal. Everything I knew was different. The radio stations on the way to school, any channel on the TV, they all had the same things.

I felt safe before this. Now I don't. I can't go onto Ft. Bliss without being searched and asked for an ID. I've only been on a plane once since then and I was terrified, I honestly didn't know if I would be making it to my destination or not. I have noticed a lot of racism at school against Arab students and it makes me hate the people that are doing this. I heard of one incident in another school where an Isreali student got hit in the head with a rotten egg. It's horrible and it's probably going to get worse before it gets better.