anniversary
sad September 11th, 2009On the morning of September 11, 2001, I woke up and turned on my clock radio, which was set to NPR, so that I could listen to the news while I woke up.  What I heard was utter pandemonium. Something about planes, and smoke, and the Pentagon being on fire, and the White House possibly under attack. I hoped it was a prank of some sort, like War of the Worlds or something, but it certainly sounded as if something big was happening, so I rubbed my eyes, got out of bed, and shuffled into the living room to turn on the TV.
I sat watching, glued to the screen, for the next five hours. I was horrified and a little choked up, wondering what in the world was happening. When I went to work that afternoon, everyone else was freaking out too. We all wore headphones and listened to the news as it unfolded. Our hearts went out to the people whose lives were lost, and to our friends and family members who lost friends and family members in the events of that tragic day. In a larger sense, the country continues to mourn a certain kind of innocence that we lost, never to be regained.
I still can’t believe that it’s been eight years since all that occurred. The world is so very different than it was on September 10, 2001.
September 11th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
I was in the fourth grade. My parents woke me up, saying that America had been attacked. I didn’t really understand what they were saying, and went to school. I was informed by another kid that the World “Train” Center had been blown up.
It was only when we sat and talked with our teacher, who was from Manhattan, and looked at the poster of the city skyline on her wall with those two austere towers, standing out above everything else, that I think I finally realized the immensity of what had happened. The way that poster suddenly seemed invalidated finally showed me how horrible that day was.