If you ask anyone where they were during the terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001 they will be able to give you a detailed response to where they were when they watched this tragedy unfold. And my story is no different.
Like all of my fellow classmates, I was in the second grade. It was the beginning of the school year and all of us that we were so superior now that we weren't the youngest in the school anymore. Unlike my classmates, I wasn't at school that day. My younger sister, Molly and I were both sick from school and home with our mother.
I remember sipping a juice box, bundled up in blankets and watching the Lion King for the thousandth time when my mom received a phone call. It was my aunt, I didn't hear what she said but all of a sudden my mom turned off the movie and changed it to a local news station.
There were images on the screen of a really tall building that looked like a piece was missing from it, and there was lots and lots of smoke. I remember asking my mom what movie this scene was from. When she told me it wasn't from a movie and that it was happening now I was confused. It was so sad. When the camera first showed the people jumping from the building, my mom made us leave the room. It took me a few days to process what exactly had happened.
Now, ten years later... I can tell you where I was on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack. At work. I work in the grill at Fox Hollow Golf Club; I had the opening shift today so I had to get up early. The cleaning lady was the only one there before me and she was sitting in the clubhouse watching the news. For a half hour I listened to the people at the 9/11 tribute read off the names in alphabetical order of those who died. A half hour. And when I looked on the screen they were only in the "C's". They had barely made a dent in the alphabet. In that moment of discovery, I got a shiver down my back and I could feel the water pooling in my eyes.
It had been ten years, but it still felt like it was ten had been 10 days. And I knew I would still hold this same memory on the 50th anniversary of September 11th
Maddy, I really liked reading your post about 9/11. (Creative title, by the way!) I hadn't really thought before of what it must have been like to see the horror on tv unfold while at home; I had just assumed that most of us were in class that day. I also enjoyed how you ended your entry with your experience of September 11th ten years later... it was a cool way to show the "then-and-now" of the event.
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