story2250.xml

story2250.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

When I first found out about the terrorist attacks on the U.S. I was on break between my 2nd and 3rd hour classes at school. I was in a bit of a rush to get to my third hour class before the tardy bell when my friend Sean came and told me the news. I remember that he first told me that a plane crashed into the Pentagon, and then another plane into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. At first, I just brushed it off. I didn't really know how big of a deal it actually was or why he was so "anxious" to tell me. I knew that the Pentagon was a very important building, but I didn't know hardly anything about the World Trade Center. On top of that, I just thought that the plane crash was a minor accicident that didn't cause a lot of damage. So, because of my ignorance of the true situation, I quickly forgot about what Sean had just told me and focused back on making it to third hour on time. It was in that third hour class when I actually understood what had happened. As soon as I walked into the classroom, my teacher had his t.v. turned onto CNN or some channel similar to it. On the screen was twin tower #1 burning. We continued to watch t.v. all hour, switching back from station to station to see if there was an expalination for the "accident". Then, on live t.v., the 2nd tower was hit, conferming the suspicions that the first plane crash was a direct attack and not an accident. At first, I thought that the 2nd plane crash was just a replay of the first crash. Then i noticed that two buildings were on fire, realizing that I had just witnessed the rest of the attack. It was so awfull. Just seeing the people on t.v. crying and running through the streets. But the worst is when the the towers fell. It was the worst thing I could ever imagine. I was feeling for all of those people that i didn't know. To me, the towers represented the way my insides felt. As they fell, so did my heart and my pride. I mean, prior to this terrrible event, I had the feeling that The United States was invincible. How could such an autrocity happen to the most powerful nation in the world? How could our government/national defense let this slip by them?
Continuing from class to class, I couldn't really focus on doing school work, as some teachers tried to make us. I wanted to know everything that happend. The rest of the school day, everybody was talking about the incident in the halls. Then at cheer practice after school, my teammated and I were all trying to piece together what we had all heard.
At home, later on that day, my mom told me about her day. She remembers watching "Good Morning America", as she always does. She told me that she remembers Diane Sawyer bringing up an "unconfirmed story" that the World Trade Center had been accidentally hit by a plane. My mother told me that she was a little upset that Diane kept bringing up the bombing in the World Trade Center in 1994. My mom thought that it was wrong for her to jump to the conclusion that the plane crash was a terrorist attack because she might alarm the people. Later on, once my mom knew what had happend, she said that she felt a huge sense of fear. She can remember hearing a lot of planes flying over our house to land at the nearest airport.
As the weeks passed by, my biggest fear was that the US would go to war. I know know that, no matter how powerful a ocuntry is, it can be vuneralbe to anything, and i shouldn't take living in such a blessed country for granted .