story1112.xml

story1112.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-19

I was in my 8:00AM Major British Authors class at NYU. We were discussing poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Around 8:40AM, I heard a low-flying plane over the building. Since there are three major airports in the area, I didn't think too much of it at the time. I heard nothing more, but a few minutes later, my beeper went off.

At 9:15AM, on my way to my next class, I received another beep. Both beeps were from my mother. Some people were standing in the street, talking about how a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Since a plane had once crashed into the Empire State Building, I didn't think too much of it, theorizing that it was perhaps a wayward commuter plane. I called my mother.

"Are you ok?" she asked.

"Of course I am. I'm on campus. I heard that a plane crashed into the twin towers, but it was just an accident."

"No, they're saying it was a terrorist attack!"

"That's how rumors are started. It wasn't a terrorist attack. I'm ok and I'll talk to you soon."

I arrived at my next class, and as people filtered in late, I heard about another plane hitting the WTC, and then there were hushed whispers of a tower collapsing. My dorm was downtown, about five blocks from the WTC site. Collapsed? A tower collapsed? Did it just fall straight down, or did it topple over? Did it crush any other buildings? Was my building levelled as well?

A security guard came into the class around 10:30 and dismissed us all. I walked out of class with a group of friends and looked downtown for the first time. That's when I saw a colossal cloud of smoke, smothering downtown New York. Cars were parked on the street, radios blasting. People were walking in the middle of the road, talking and watching. There were lines of people at pay phones. My mother beeped me again. My girlfriend beeped me.

I tried to use my cell phone, but all circuits were busy. I wondered if I would be able to make it back downtown, to my dorm (it reopened two and a half weeks later). I wondered if I should stay in the city or if I should head home. I visited a comic book store with a friend. I finally made it through to my mother and my girlfriend. NYU was very fast and efficient, setting up an emergency shelter at the recreation center. I visited it and registered my name, so that they'd have a record of my being safe. A friend of mine at the rec center told me that the planes might have been carrying anthrax. He said that he saw people jumping from the upper floors.

A friend offered me a place to stay, but in my terrorist-inspired paranoid mind, I wondered if the WTC attacks were a diversion to occupy the city's police forces while another, more deadly attack was being planned uptown. That's when I decided to leave the city. Since the subways were shut down, I walked from 8th street to Grand Central Station on 42nd, took the first train I could hop on back home to Westchester County (the MTA provided free service that day), and rode home. NYU was closed for the remainder of the week, and I commuted to school for the next two and a half weeks until the dorms were reopened.

I know no one who perished in the attacks, but my daily thoughts are with them.