[Untitled]

News media

I was twelve and in the seventh grade. We never had the tv or news on in my house before we went to school in the morning, so I didn't know what had happened until I got to my first period Social Studies class. Among the chatter filling the room, I started hearing specific words repeated: New York. Planes. World Trade Center. I realized the tv was on, so I tuned in and saw something tiny fly into a really tall skyscraper. They zoomed in the footage of the same thing and played it again. New York. Planes. World Trade Center.



Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.



I understood. I understood, but it wasn't real. It looked like footage out of a movie. We watched the same moment in time on the screen, over and over. But it wasn't real. Other kids starting putting things together, announcing that they had family in New York and that they were worried, or other kids asked to use the phone on the wall to call their parents to make sure these other relatives were okay. I didn't have any family in New York. Then we got word on more crashes, in Pennsylvania, at the Pentagon maybe? The newscasters weren't even sure if they had all the facts. I didn't know what the Pentagon was, but it sounded really important and they said it was close to the White House. My aunt lived an hour from DC. It still wasn't real. CNN streamed notifications at the bottom of the screen: Rumored Plane to Crash in: L.A., Boston, New York again, Washington D.C. More kids wanted to call their parents. It wasn't real.



The news stream interrupted itself to show new footage. It was the same tall set of buildings in New York, but no planes. This time, something tiny wasn't flying into a building, it was falling beside it. They zoomed in on the footage again. These were people. In the fire and the smoke and the fear there were people who had no choice but to fall to an escape. It was real. So many people falling, which meant so many more people who hadn't chosen or been able to use that same method for escape. So many people must have been trapped, must have been hurt. They must have been so scared. We were all scared for them.



I don't remember how the rest of the school day went. If we continued to rotate through our regular class schedule or if we stayed in the same room all day. I don't remember if they let us go early or if we stayed until the normal end-of-the-day time. The last part of that day I remember was sitting in a friend's kitchen, taking turns calling all the far away family we knew or people who worked in bigger cities, trying to get a hold of everyone we could to make sure they were okay. No one I called was picking up. There were so many more city names added to the list of potential terrorist attacks people had called in to the news to report. I called my grandparents in Florida and they picked up. They were safe, they were okay and they were happy that I was okay. That was the only good news I had heard.



It's been ten years since the 9/11 we all know. I haven't watched any footage from that day but I don't need to, really. It is still so real. We were all scared. We all grieved, and still do. The rest of the world claimed that "we are all Americans" upon learning about our nation's tragedy. We were all Americans, and all Americans were New Yorkers.