story736.xml

story736.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-06-06

It began as an absolutely normal Tuesday morning at Barker Central School, located in western New York on September 11, 2002. The sky was blue and all of the students were still forcing their eyes open from waking up so early in the morning. Coincidentally, the topic for the day, in second period Global Studies, was the Taliban government. While in the middle of class at about 9:00 a.m. the neighboring teacher interrupted the class to talk to our teacher, Mrs. Capen, for what we thought would be a brief moment. My friends and I started talking amongst ourselves, thinking she would be a minute or two. Then Mrs. Capen turned on the television, located in our classroom, to a news channel. Still talking to my friends, I thought this was just part of the lesson.

Then it hit me, but every so slowly. A plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. I knew what was going on, but I just didn't believe it was happening, because it was so unexpected. The scene shown on the television was exactly like a Hollywood movie, only it wasn't. By now all of the students including the teachers were astonished and frozen, unable to speak. Every word coming from the reporter's mouth was so seriously taken, because no one had ever experienced anything near this degree. By 9:03 a.m. a second plane had crashed into the other still unschathed trade building. It was an absolute disaster.

The bell rang and the students filled the hallways leaving their classes with little knowledge of the current events as well as confusion and worry, which followed them to their next period. Gym was next on my agenda and we were playing football. All other classes had their televisions on and canceled all plans for the day. After playing some football, we all came back in and changed into our school clothes. We watched another five minutes of the news and discovered that the Pentagon had been hit by another plane at approximately 9:30 a.m.

On my way to the next class, I was thinking about what was going to be hit next. In Art, Mr. Stephens had the television on just like all the other teachers, and he was updating us on recent news as best as he could. I can still remember the constant pouring of dust out the top of the trade buildings. By now my classmates were telling me all sorts of facts about what happened, because they didn't miss a whole half hour of the news as I did while in gym class. Around 10:29 a.m. the end of the period was creeping up and all of a sudden the last World Trade Center building gave way! It came down so slowly, ripping through the air and bringing every last steel beam down with it. The cloud of dust was absolutely enormous. It was like a bomb had been dropped right on the two towers. The news showed people all bloodied-up and coughing as if they were dying.

I went home that day not knowing if either of my parents had heard the news yet. My mother wasn't home yet and my father was on the lawnmower. I ran to my dad to ask him if he had heard about or watched any of the news. He said he didn't. He couldn't believe it either. My mom came home in about a half an hour and ran into the house and turned on the news; she was painstankenly aware of the tragedy that had occured that morning. We all watched the news that night and went to bed glad that we were all safe and sound, but with thoughts of people who's mothers and fathers had not come home that night.