I thought it was an accident. That was my very first thought. On September 11, 2001, I couldn’t imagine even graduating from high school let alone graduating college, moving to North Carolina and getting married. Hell, on September 11, 2001, I couldn’t even focus on anything more than getting through the day and working on the Lion’s Roar, Longwood High School’s school newspaper. I had my day planned out: Go to class, eat lunch and work on layouts in Mr. Bing’s Journalism classroom/office, and then go home.
But it all changed when I walked into Mr. Bing’s room after Mr. Cauchi’s AP college writing class on the morning of Tuesday, September 11. My dear dear friend Brian stopped me in the doorway and said in a low voice, “Just to let you know, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.”
We thought it was an accident. After the first plane crashed, who didn’t think it was just an accident?
I told my story last year, so I won’t retell it. You can click the link if you want to read it. There are some things you never forget in life, some things that you always remember where you were; previous generations had Pearl Harbor and JFK’s assassination. I have always remember learning about the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in my first grade class. My teacher shared with us that she remembered where she was when she learned about it and I was just stunned that someone I knew was alive for something we learned about in our textbook!
A full 20 years later, it is strange to know that for the rest of my life, there will always be a group of people who will actually be eager to hear my very own “where I was” story. I didn’t want to be there!! If you want to hear other people’s stories, check this site out.
So I just spent the past hour watching YouTube videos about 9/11 and now, of course, I’m crying. There were 5,000 people who did not deserve to die. I cannot believe that 10 years has gone by. I just never thought ahead to how much it would hurt to remember that morning a full ten years later. I have been trying to find the lyrics to “God Bless the U.S.A.” that are tailored to 9/11 but for some reason, I can’t. Oh, well. Whatevs. God Bless the U.S.A.
So the question of today is where were you?
This next video is the one that made me cry, so if you’re going to watch it, beware.
