story2197.xml

story2197.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

It was quite eiree. On September 10, I had bought a card game involving time travel. The next morning, I was playing the solotaire version, changing the outcome of many important historical events such as the sinking of the Lusitania, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, and the assassination of JFK, when my roommate came home from work and told me that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center.

We turned on the news and watched the reports on the crash thinking, "It must've been some kind of malfunction." When we saw the second airplane hit, it became all too clear. This was not an accident. An attack on the US even more shocking and devastating than the bombing of Pearl Harbor had just unfolded before our eyes.

From now on, people would remember not just where they were when Kennedy was assassinated (except for those of us who had not been born yet), but also where they were when terrorism hit America. I'm sure that even in the year 2051 I'll still remember the image on the television of the second plane banking left in order to slam into a major US building full of American citizens.

The only thing that kept me from falling apart completely in the following weeks was seeing the citizens of New York and D.C., people who would normally not even say "hi" to anyone they see out on the street, jumping in to help in the rescue efforts for people they've never met before. It felt so good to see people performing acts of help and kindness to combat acts of harm and hatred.