story2212.xml

story2212.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

September 11th started off pretty much as any other day. I brought my breakfast to my first hour history class, because the teacher didn't mind. I went to my German class, and that was pretty normal too, although the planes had already hit about 15 minues earlier. The first time that I actually heard anything about the planes hitting the World Trade Center was in between first and second hours at my high school. I was in the bathroom by the foreign language hallway. A couple of other guys came in, and were talking about some planes hitting some buildings in New York and a bomb going off at the Pentagon, or something like that. They thought it was pretty funny, like it was all a big joke. I didn't really make much of it, until I got to my third hour Lit class and saw the WTC belching smoke on the TV. My teacher's son lives in New York City, and she was frantically dialing his home and cell phone numbers, and naturally getting no response because of the lines being tied up. Eventually she started crying. As bad as that was, the next shot on the TV was the Pentagon, which another plane had flown into. The first words out of my mouth were, "Holy shit, my sister works right by the Pentagon" (My sister is on the staff of a senator from Indiana). I stared at the screen for the rest of the hour, and saw both of the towers fall. I saw a man running down the street thrown to the ground by the force and debris from the building hitting the ground, followed by the cameraman crouching down behind a car to protect himself from danger. Before it fell, I saw people jump out the windows. I saw dazed people stumbling around the street, covered in dust and soot. I heard someone say that firemen and cops had been trying to get everybody out, but they weren't sure if they had, or even if they themselves had gotten out of the buildings before they fell. I kept hearing rumors of bombs going off in Washington, D.C. On the steps of the Capital, a car bomb supposedly went off (it didn't). That scared me even more, what if my sister was in the Capital building, or leaving it? I left the class kind of in a trance, worried about my sister (who was fine, I later learned), worried what might happen to all those people. My math teacher tried to teach a lesson, but nobody paid attention. Nobody took notes, and nobody did the assignment. Everyone wanted to watch what was happening on TV. The rest of the day was a blur, that I don't remember at all. I don't need to. I had seen enough, and I didn't want to see any more.