nmah6742.xml

nmah6742.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-09-12

Three years ago today I was in my first week of seventh grade at a new school, about a 10 or 15 minute drive from downtown DC. This is what I wrote in my diary on September 16th, 2001.

September 16, 2001

I know I haven't written in a while, but I think it's really important to write down what's been happening in the past few days, because this has been the scariest week of my life so far. I guess I'll start from the beginning.

As I looked at the paper on Tuesday morning, I noticed a story about Michael Jordan joining the Washington Wizards. I thought it was huge news.

At about 10:30 on Tuesday, I was in math class and my teacher, Kristen, was talking about circle graphs. The head of the middle school-I think her name's Barbara-came into our class. Kristen said "Hi. We're just gonna meet with the kids in the black box for a few minutes." I got a lump in the back of my throat. The black box, by the way, is the drama room, but it's really big, so they have assemblies and stuff there. As I walked in, I heard things like "It's the fifth day of school and we're already in trouble!" and "It wasn't me!"

Then I heard someone talking about how my friend Sophie was crying and someone told her that she was safe. That was when I knew something bad had happened. A kid asked Barbara if we were in trouble-it was just the 7th grade, they were going to tell the 6th and they had already told the 8th, but I didn't know that-and she sorta half-smiled and said, "No. It doesn't have to do with school, but something has happened and we feel it's important to let you know." My first thought was,"Oh God, another school shooting or something."

Soon, everyone settled down and she said, "Ah, there have been reports that were attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Some of the reports were that there were bombs in the basement of the buildings, or that planes hit them, but at this point we just don't know. Now, I know you all will have questions, and I don't want to give you false information, but we will try to answer your questions." A kid asked how many people were killed and she said "We really don't know. And if you're scared, you're here for eachother, and you can always talk to a teacher, but we're going to try to continue having a normal day. Please go back to your classes in an orderly way."

As everyone stood up, the silent, shocked room erupted into about 40 different conversations. I turned to Cyndi who was standing next to me and said "I'm really freaked out! My mom's in New York!" "Do you know where she is? I'm sure she's fine."

I went back to math class, shaking. I wasn't quite sure how close the Pentagon was to Georgetown University[where my dad works]. In math, Kristen said, "What's the worst thing you can do at a time like this?" and everyone said "Panic." So we were dismissed to go to our next class.

As I was heading to science, I saw Sophie and her mom Vicki sitting on the stairs. Sophie looked up at me and her eyes were all red and she was crying really hard. I was now sure Dad was alright, because Vicki works at Georgetown too. I was still really scared about Mom.

In science, a kid named Dan told me the Twin Towers fell over. I thought he meant fell inbto the middle of New York, not fell onto themselves. Someone else said tens of thousands of people had died. I started shaking so hard that my teacher came up to me and asked if I was okay. I said, "Yeah, it's just that my mom's in New York."

She said "Okay, I can see why that would get you scared." That freaked me out even more and I started crying. She asked if someone in my family was in DC, I nodded. She asked if I wanted to call them. I said no. She told me that she was really good at distractions and asked if I wanted one, I said yeah. So she started asking about people she knew from Green Acres[the school I went to before]. Then I went back to work. When people brought it up during the rest of class, she told them to be quiet, and I think it was because of me.

Next I had recess and thankfully, Barbara came up to me, and told me my family had called and said they were okay. I was still freaked out about everything else, and at lunch some kids were saying every big city was gonna be bombed, and they thought Chicago's Sears Tower was next. That scared me. THen I had history. We were supposed to be studying the conflict in Jerusalem, but my teacher decided we would do something fun instead. Then my dad came and we went home.

On the way, he told me about the Pennsylvania plane. For the rest of the day, I kept wondering if there were going to be more attacks. I'm still nervous. I watched the news for the rest of the day, basically non-stop. But I did call Sophie to see if she was okay. She said her dad worked in the Pentagon, but he was on the other side of the building. He couldn't call because all the phones were jammed. Mom called too. There wasn't school the next day, and I think everyone was still in shock.

Thursday, I went back to school. No one at my school was directly affected, but a kid in Sam's[my brother] English class's dad died in the Pentagon.