story2038.xml

story2038.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-10

I remember it being warm and perfectly clear out that morning. I had started out groaning about the rest of the week before me. I ended up smiling because i had my whole life ahead of me.
I went to my first period Chemistry class, nothing different, and on to second period Today?s food class. We must have been secluded, because we had no idea what was happening outside of our little classroom at Northmont High School in Clayton, Ohio. No idea what was having the greatest impact, no only on mine and everyone?s life around me, but on every human life in the entire world. That?s a huge impact, but consider the impact that caused it. On to third period History to hear about the newest addition to the history of the rest of our life. Just towards the end of the class we had heard about the tremendous ?accident.? Soon we?d find out that it wasn?t an accident at all, but an intentional terror. Throughout class i was in?awe. I got to 4th period English just in time to see he second tower get hit. I?ve never seen the halls clear as fast as they had that day. Everything was awkward after that. Some people were crying around me, I had seen my teacher hug his wife. There were people just staring, they must have felt the way i did. We weren?t directly effected, but effected just the same as any one else that day. I didn?t know whether to cry for all of the people lost, the tragedy, to pray for the people still living with it, for hope, to smile because I'm still here, of gratitude. What was I supposed to do? Nothing like that had ever happened to any of us, we were still only kids!
Well I didn?t have long to ponder what was in front of me, staring Americans hard in the face. I was called to the office to go home. i wondered a bit and went. I got outside to my mom and she told me that if we were going to die, then we were going to die together. By this time people in Dayton were packing up and going away because of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was rumored to be the 3rd most likely place to get strike, New York, D.C. then us! I don?t know if it was true even to this day, but if i had to believe that two planes had taken out the Twin Towers and another had hit the Pentagon, then I'd believe anything by now.
So there I was at home with my mom, my little brothers and my step-dad. I looked at it as getting a day off, everything I was seeing on T.V. was like a movie to me. I had seen so many films with almost the same type of thing over and over. Watching the commotion, I fell asleep, not understanding the severity of the ordeal. I woke up from my nap and the only thing you could watch on T.V. were these two great towers crumbling to the ground and our nation?s capital burning to dust. The death toll climbing kept climbing past any ones estimations.
I came to school the next day and everything seemed alive with chattering about the past day?s events and dead with grieving at the same time. So many people had stayed home to mourn the loss of their loved ones. The rest of us were still a bit shocked. I came back to first period Chemistry. It felt different. Like what if I weren?t sitting here, but i had been sitting in one of those offices. The girl next to me felt the same. We talked and she told me that her mom had been sent to New York on the first bus out since all of the airports were closed. I felt for her. I hadn?t lost anyone to the terrorist attacks, but she had to deal with it for over a month; she was just glad it wasn?t forever. I can?t blame her, think of how many people can?t say that.