story9521.xml
Title
story9521.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-09-09
911DA Story: Story
September 11th, 2001, was a regular school day for me. I got up at 7AM like I usually did and got ready for school. I had been sick and stayed home the day before and I wasn't really feeling much better so my parents let me stay home from school. Since I was up I decided to go eat breakfast and come back upstairs to my room and listen to the radio like I had done the last 9 years that I had been living in Leesburg.
As time passed I kept looking out the window and thinking how nice of a day it was, yet for some reason I just felt odd about the day. It might have been because I was sick, but something just felt off. Around 9AM, when the radio program that I listen to would have normally been going off the air, there was a break in the commercial and it returned to the program. They were saying that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade towers. At first, like many people I would imagine, I thought that it was a small plane and it wasn't going to be a big thing.
About that time my mom, who was downstairs watching TV, called me down and told me what had happened. I told her that I knew about it already. At that same moment I was watching the TV and I saw the second plane crash into the other tower live. The first thing that I noticed was it was a commercial jet-liner and that casualties would have been horrific. I couldn't believe what I was seeing on TV. After the initial shock had worn off from the first two planes was about the time that the news had reported an explosion at the Pentagon. Immediately I knew that it couldn't just be coincidence. I was afraid to be where I was in relation to Washington, DC. I kept looking out the window for planes flying overhead since the FAA had grounded all other commercial flights. I could only imagine what the situation was like at school.
Later, after the towers collapsed I knew that everyone inside those buildings was dead. For some reason I wasn't as upset as I should have been by what had happened, I just felt desensitized from seeing and hearing about the seemingly daily terrorist activities in Israel and Palestine and in the Phillipines.
I know I didn't mention anything about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, but thats only because I don't know enough about what happened except that the passengers on board were pretty courageous and attempted to subdue the hijackers.
Now, a few days from the second anniversary of 9-11, I feel the same as I did when it happened, just more aware of things going on in the world besides the sometimes trivial and meaningless activities that go on in America.
As time passed I kept looking out the window and thinking how nice of a day it was, yet for some reason I just felt odd about the day. It might have been because I was sick, but something just felt off. Around 9AM, when the radio program that I listen to would have normally been going off the air, there was a break in the commercial and it returned to the program. They were saying that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade towers. At first, like many people I would imagine, I thought that it was a small plane and it wasn't going to be a big thing.
About that time my mom, who was downstairs watching TV, called me down and told me what had happened. I told her that I knew about it already. At that same moment I was watching the TV and I saw the second plane crash into the other tower live. The first thing that I noticed was it was a commercial jet-liner and that casualties would have been horrific. I couldn't believe what I was seeing on TV. After the initial shock had worn off from the first two planes was about the time that the news had reported an explosion at the Pentagon. Immediately I knew that it couldn't just be coincidence. I was afraid to be where I was in relation to Washington, DC. I kept looking out the window for planes flying overhead since the FAA had grounded all other commercial flights. I could only imagine what the situation was like at school.
Later, after the towers collapsed I knew that everyone inside those buildings was dead. For some reason I wasn't as upset as I should have been by what had happened, I just felt desensitized from seeing and hearing about the seemingly daily terrorist activities in Israel and Palestine and in the Phillipines.
I know I didn't mention anything about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, but thats only because I don't know enough about what happened except that the passengers on board were pretty courageous and attempted to subdue the hijackers.
Now, a few days from the second anniversary of 9-11, I feel the same as I did when it happened, just more aware of things going on in the world besides the sometimes trivial and meaningless activities that go on in America.
Collection
Citation
“story9521.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 16, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/4987.