story281.xml

story281.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-03-20

I guess during the earlier hours of 9/11, I think I
could've been one of the leading candidates for the
National Apathy Award....

My day started out as usual, waking up a bit late,
groggy from another 5 hour sleeping spell,
hurring to take a shower, get dressed, and speed down
495 and Braddock Lane to make a 9AM class at George Mason
University. I probably left my house a little before
8:30 and was nearing the campus feeling good because
I was making great time on the road. I live in Alexandria
and it takes me at least 25 minutes(on a REAL GOOD day)
to get to GMU. I thought I was actually going to make it
to campus with time to spare to get to my class on TIME.

Anyways, I had been listening to WTOP 1500 AM on my way to
school that morning at a little before 8:45AM the radio
announcer was just mentioning some news about how Iraqi
military officials had claimed that they shot down an
American fighter plane. I think it just turned out to be
a drone/surveillance craft. The next thing I know, the
announcer breaks routine and says something like "...this
just in...a plane has a apprently crashed into the World
Trade Center..." I was surprised but just wrote it off
as a really freak piloting accident. I continue listening
to the incoming reports and the news commentators discussing
what could've happend.

I arrived at parking lot K at around 9AM or so, when ever
the time the second plane struck because the commentator
mentioned that "...a second plane has struck the World Trade
Center..." And AGAIN I writ it off as a freak plane
accident. I honestly thought that maybe somehow, someway,
the two planes almost hit each other and swerved away from
each other, one hitting one tower and the other hitting
the other tower. Of course now that I look back, I didn't
take into account the time differential between the two
crashes. Chalk it up to getting little sleep the night
before and being in a rush to get to class(it was after 9AM
now). I got out of my car and made a walked quickly to my
class room which was in Robinson B(at least another 5 mins).
To my surprise, when I got to the room no one was there.
Then I rememberd on my syllabus that it said something
about going to the library to learn about reasearch
resources for our term paper. So I guessed that my class
had gone over to Fenwick or possibly the Johnson Center.
I saw one of my classsmates who was also late and she
wondered where everyone was as well. Anyways, she decided
to go home and sleep since it was already 9:15. I still
wanted to see if I could find my class so I decided to
take a look at Fenwick library to see if they were there.
I made it too the library and did a quick search but didn't
see them so I decided to give it up. Now I wasn't sure
what I should've done as I had no other classes that day.

It occurred to me that I was dead tired from lack of sleep
during the night so I decided to go take a nap at one of the
corners of the upper levels in the Johnson Center, they
have couches there where people usually conk out. So on my
way to the couches I pass by the News Center where they
have T.V.'s and there were a bunch of people watching the
news reports. I just brushed it off, thinking "oh I already
know about that, that's totally weird those guys flew into
the World Trade Center" and headed up to go to sleep.
Luckily I found an area on the top floor with noone there.
I lied down on the couch readying myself for a nice nap.
The last thing I remember thinking as I lay my head down
was noticing how beautifully blue the sky was outside as I
peered out the large panes of glass surrounding this
corner of the building.

The exact time when I woke up is now cloudy to me but I'm
guessing it was either 10AM or 10:30. I don't remember
why I woke up, maybe I think I set my watch alarm, but
I got up and I think I decided I was going to go home. I
walked down the stair case and noticed that the crowd
surrounding the televisions in the News Center had more
than tripled! It really piqued my interest this time and
I decided to go see what was going on. I got around
the back of the crowd and peered at the televisions and
saw the footage of two smoking towers, little did I know
that it was only a replay. At that moment, one
of the guys that used to work with me at the Patriot Center
caught my attention. I walked over to him and was like
"what's going on?" What he said next left me dumbfounded.
"The World Trade Center towers have collapsed....the
Pentagon just got hit, and there's one more plane that
they just lost contact with" At this point I was just
totally open eyed and replied with "What the hell!? what
the hell is going on!? I just woke up! I just woke up
from a nap!" I look at the television screens to catch
the footage of tower two beginning to collapse and crumbling
to the ground. It was quickly follwed up with footage of a
smoldering Pentagon building. I just stood there with
my former co-worker watching the tv's. Speculating
on where the last plane was headed, I said "They're
probably going to go for the Washington Monument.." My
co-worker follwed up with an "oh yeah....or maybe the
Capitol..."

By this time the surreality of the situation was just
mind numbing. One of the people sitting around me picked
up that day's edition of the New York post and pointed
to the picture of whom I think was a baseball player on
the front page. He said something like "..and this was
on the front page today..." Someone else replied with
"...It won't look like that tomorrow..." He put that
paper down, which I eventually took to save as a memento
but I've lost it by now, and I surveyed the faces of the
people around me. Mostly just blank stares, people on
cell phones, the pay phone, some people crying. There
was this one girl standing behind me wiping away her tears.
I almost felt like crying when I saw her crying. I felt
like going over and hugging her or something but I
didn't. I just was kind of out of it, weirded out at what
had just happend. I had just gone for a little thrity
minute nap thinking everything was OK, but I wake up to
what seems like a war zone. It was just totally dreamlike.
Whatever the case, I eventually made my way back home
to my house in Alexandria. My brother came home shortly
home afterwards from GMU too. Then my youngest brother
came home from high school later that day. And finally
my mom came home from work at the Washington Hospital
Center in the evening. My dad called from overseas to see
if everything was ok. It was just a real strange day.
It was such a beautiful morning, not a cloud in the sky,
who would have thought that something horrific would have
happend that day? Certainly not I. To this day, there
is a certain way that I'm still in disbelief that the
World Trade Center towers are gone, just totally destroyed.
If you weren't able to visit the WTC before that September
11th morning, then you aren't going to be able to visit
those same old towers again. It just amazes me how
the enormity of NEVER weighs upon things. 'Never' is
endless, indefinite.

I think I learned my lesson not to brush things off that
day....