story8358.xml

story8358.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-10-03

School started at 8:45 that morning, while the Canadian anthem played at 9:00 in-class like it usually does at my school. I arrived at school at 8:25 that morning. I left the house that morning with another normal day ahead of me. There was barely any news that morning, and everything seemed fine. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

I first heard about the 9/11 terror attacks at my High School (Saint Pius) around 11:15 AM during my first senior year as a Grade 11 student. I was in my second class of the day when the school Vice Principle came on over the school P.A. and told everyone to remain in their classrooms and not to go home. At the time, many of the students (like myself) had not heard the horrific news and were clueless to what the Principle was talking about. The Principle briefly mentioned that "a horrific event" had taken place in the United States, but failed to inform us of any attacks. I started to assume that some type of mass shooting at a US high school was probably what the Principle was referring to. After the principle's message, everyone in the class (including myself) started to question the teacher. Everyone was curious to know what had happened in the United States. The teacher told us to stop asking her all at once, and give her a chance to tell us what she knew about this "horrific event". She told us that she heard that 3 planes had been hijacked and slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Some of us had no idea what the World Trade Center was, so she referred to it as the "Twin Towers Of New York". Those 5 words filled the entire classroom with shock and disbelief. I immediately started to think about what is must of been like for the people on board and pictured the hijackers in my mind. As the lunch bell rang 15 minutes later, I met 2 of my friends outside my classroom and all 3 of us agreed that we should go to someone's house to check it on television. So we walked to one of my friend's house which was about 5 or 6 minutes away. We talked about what we thought was happening on the way to my friend's house. One of my friends was still in disbelief that terrorists could slam a plane into the Pentagon. We arrived at my friend's house about 5 minutes after we left the school. We got in the door, walked into the livingroom, sat down, and turned on the television to CNN. The first image I saw when that television screen came on, was one image i'll never forget. I saw World Trade Center collapsing into the streets of Lower Manhattan. I knew it was a re-run of earlier footage because Aaron Brown (The CNN New York correspondent) mentioned that it was footage from earlier on. I constantly looked at my friends and said "This is unbelievable... Can you believe this?" I had no idea that it was this serious at first. My lunch was in the bag, but I was too disgusted to even think about eating at this point. The friend that took us to his house was on the phone for about 10 minutes after we turned on the television. Apparently some of his relatives were coming flying to Ottawa from Italy on that same day. My friend only realized this after we had turned on the television, and began calling his Mother and Father and asking them if they had any information on their flight or if they were okay. Neither parent was sure. I was watching and reading some of the information on the little scrolling ticker that you see on the bottom of the screen. Some of the headlines on that ticker read "President Bush moved to undisclosed location"... "Philadelphia landmarks evacuated"... "All NYC airports now closed." As I read more of these headlines, I became worried, and began to think that anything was possible at this point. Hell, half of the Eastern US was evacuated. After about 25-30 minutes of watching CNN, we decided to get back to school so that we could tell other people what we saw. As we left the house, I looked up at the sky with a sense of fear. At this point, I thought that anything could have happened. It was a beautiful weather day. It was about 21 or 22 (Celcius), and it was totally clear. On our way back, my friends were saying stuff like "Can't you see the US making Iraq one big parking lot?" We were dead serious about that question. As we walked through the school field back to the buildings, one of my friends said "If I see one plane, I am running." I then said "Don't worry, I don't think they'll attack us." But deep down, I was terrified. Once we got into the outside area of the school (the area in between the all the buildings where everyone hangs out at lunch) we began telling others what we saw. Many people live far from the school, so we were one of the few groups of people that saw it that lunch. I remember saying "You can actually see the towers falling apart onto the street." I had seen the footage of the tower collapsing, but I still had not seen footage of the planes going into the buildings. I didn't even know that there was footage of the planes going into the buildings. After about 10 minutes of telling other friends what we saw, the warning bell rang for third period (third period for seniors, but the start of junior lunch for the juniors). I was one of the first ones to arrive at my computer engineering class. The time was now about 12:25 PM. Once the entire class arrived, we began to work our "Bread board" activity that we had started the day before. The teacher didn't need to instruct us because the lesson was the same for the entire week. I began talking to one of my other friends in the class as we tried to work. I told him what I knew, and he told me what he knew. It was increasingly more difficult to work as I thought about it more and more. About 20 minutes into class, the teacher got a television working with an antenna. We tried picking up CTV, and managed to get a satisfactory signal. I saw Lloyd Robertson's face at first, then we started to get sound as someone adjusted the antenna. We heard him say something like "And now we have-- We have a video shot of the second plane going into the building." I thought "Oh my God." All of the sudden, they showed the Twin Towers. One was in flames, and one was still untouched. Then you could see this black object on the far right of the screen slowly work it's way to the center of the screen where the towers stood. Then you could see this big explosion from the other side. I remember a guy named Brandon looking up at me and saying "Holy crap, man." He was in disbelief, just like the rest of us. There were only about 5 or 6 of us around the television, but the class had close to 25 people. I told my friend to come over quick and take a look at what I was watching. It was still a little difficult to see every detail since the signal had a fair amount of static. After getting no work done during that class, I headed off to my last class of the day at 1:45 PM. Physical Education was the last class of the day. We were outside for class playing Frisbee Football. I played the first game, but after that, I began to think of the attacks again. The weather was still beautiful and was perfect. After we played a few games, it was close to 3:00 PM which is when school ends. I was so terrified, that I remember wondering what it would be like if a plane would hit our gym! I got changed, grabbed my stuff, and left the gym. I headed towards the parking for my drive home. While walking towards the parking lot, I looked at a few 30 story apartment buildings off to the East with the sun shining on them. I saw my Mother who was driving me home that day. I went over, hopped into the backseat of the van, and the first thing I remember saying to her was "So, you must have heard the news." She replied with "Of course. This is like a nightmare." On our way home, we had to stop at the grocery store to grab a bag of milk and a loaf of bread since we were out. I rarely like going into grocery stores, but I told my Mother that i'd go in with her because I wanted to ask her everything she had heard that day. I was getting on her nerves with all my wuestions while we were in the store. We went to the express line and quickly moved through. I remember my cashier asked my Mother a question about the attacks, but I do not remember what the question was. When we got home, I threw my bag onto my bed, grabbed a blank VHS tape, went downstairs, turned to CNN, and started recording. I spent the entire night watching CNN in my basement on our big screen. I didn't get any homework done, nor did I think of anything except the attacks. At supper, I ran upstairs, grabbed my plate, ran back downstairs, and kept watching. I put down my plate, and completely forgot about it. After 45 minutes, I realized that I hadn't touched my supper. I got through two "mouth-fulls" of corn, then stopped. I wasn't hungry. Around this time, CNN had breaking news that there were explosions in Kabul, Afghanistan. I can very well remember my Fathers saying "This could be the beginning of World War 3." My Father followed me downstairs when I had my supper earlier on. He watched television with me for the rest of the night. I watched and taped George Bush's speech to America. Around 10:45 PM, I decided to get some rest. I prepared for bed my brushing my teeth and doing everything that I usually do before bed. I had difficulty falling asleep that night. I finally remember falling asleep around 1:30 in the morning. When I woke up the next morning, it was close to 6:00 AM. It turned on my little television in my room, and noticed that every channel had live coverage, even at 5:45 in the morning.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 will be a day that I won't ever forget. Images of the World Trade Center on fire are embedded in my mind until the day I die. I find myself thinking about them every once in a while. As for the tapes that I recorded during 9/11: I still have them, but I haven't watched them in a while. Those tapes will be something to show my children. Those tapes will always be a treasure of mine. Those tapes show thousands of people being murdered. Those tapes show September 11 -- The day that shook America.