story451.xml

story451.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-04-22

I have lived in Brooklyn for the past year and a half while going to John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Right before September 11 I was considering transferring back home to Georgia State or University of Georgia. On September 11 I was at home in Brooklyn, I didn't have class on Tuesdays that semester and usually I tried to get out and explore in the city on my days off. But that day I had slept in and not followed my original plan, which was to take a Bath and Body Works gift certificate and a Borders gift certificate to the World Trade Center mall. My mother almost called me that morning, she realized that if she had called and woken me up I would have most likely gotten up, gotten dressed, and gotten on with my day.
After I woke up that morning, I got online. My friend Emily from Georgia instant-messenged me, asking if I had heard about the World Trade Center. I immediately thought it was a joke that somebody at a radio station in Georgia was doing. I got an email from an old acquaintance asking if I was all right. Emily told me to turn on the news, but I couldn't because the antennae of the networks had been knocked out. I got the news online and was horrified...I was pretty sure that I could smell smoke from across the river. I called my mother in Georgia at her job, but her boss told me that she and the other women who worked there had gone to our church to pray. I must be a New Yorker, I took the bombing of the city as a sign that the world was ending.
My best friend was at that time at the University of Southern California. I called her and she told me that she and her sorority sisters were just waiting, that they were sure that the West Coast was next. We talked about why this was happening, and I told her that I wasn't sure but the news had said that an associate of Osama bin Laden (whose name I had never heard before that day) was to be sentenced at a courthouse in lower Manhattan that day, and that was probably the rationale behind this.
My sister and some friends of ours were in high school, when they heard they panicked, my sister was hysterical. They don't know Brooklyn from Manhattan, all they heard was New York City. The principal of one of the high schools where my friends go refused to allow the televisions on, because the news was "disruptive" - not surprising, as the general consensus is that the man is a moron. I called my sister's school and left a message for her, I called everyone I knew when I was able to get a dial tone. I sent out mass emails to everyone whose email addresses I had.
My roommate is a NYPD cadet, I tried calling her cell phone but of course it didn't go through. I left her messages, "I know you're ok, but please just let me know." I was worried that she would have to walk home if public transportation wasn't accessible.
Once I managed to pick up CBS out of New Jersey, and turn on the AM radio, I was afraid to turn the news off. I sat on my couch and just watched, helplessly, all night long. I prayed to the CBS anchors to deliver me some better news. I don't watch CBS much anymore, I think my subconscious holds them responsible for being the messengers of devastation.
I even made a "date" with an acquantaince I'm not that fond of to go give blood, but it didn't happen.
For a while after September 11, I tried to read about it. But I felt sick every time. One night, very late, on one of the networks, I caught sight of some footage I had never seen of people aflame, jumping from the towers. It made me sob in despair, that people had been caught in that situation of futility.
I volunteered at the Billy Graham Prayer Center a few times, but the Prayer Center left New York after a disappointing volume of calls. The people who needed it won't realize it for a while to come.
After September 11, I was more determined to stay here and not to transfer schools. I still love the city.