So, today in my U.S. History class we watched and HBO documentary about 9/11. As I was sitting there and watching, I started thinking about what I was doing on September 11, 2001. I was in the first grade and for some reason, even though I was very young, I remember everything as if it were yesterday. At the time, I don’t think that I completely understood how truly terrible that day was, I just knew that something was wrong.
September 11, 2001 started out like any other day for me. I woke up early, like any young child eager to go to school would, and just like clockwork, my dad picked my sister and me up from the house and took us to day care. Once we were at day care, we ate breakfast, buttered toast with cinnamon-sugar. The first plane hit the North tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. At that point, our day care did not know about it, and we were on our way down to school, which started at 9:05.
When I got to my classroom I was in the room for about five minutes and our principal came onto the intercom telling the teachers to have their associates take over and to meet her in the cafeteria immediately. All of the teachers did exactly as she said and our associate teacher started out our day with a spelling test. We were in the middle of the spelling test and our teacher returned to the room.
I will never forget the look on our associate teacher’s face and her immediate reaction after our teacher whispered into her ear. Frozen. Complete and utter shock fell over her face. And then she embraced my teacher. My teacher, Mrs. Phillips, began to cry. Tears just poured down her face. She went into the next room and that class joined ours. The associate from the other class and our associate gathered us on the carpet and read us books.
As kids we were wondering what was wrong with Mrs. Phillips. Everyone was whispering back and forth to each other, but oddly the teachers didn’t stop us. At about 10:00 kids started getting called out of class, one by one. By 12:30 there were about 10 of us left from both of the classes. We went down to lunch, but we had indoor recess. When we came back to the room, I saw Mrs. Phillips at her desk, on the phone, surrounded by three other teachers and our principal.
“Sweetie?!? Is that you? Oh my gosh. Thank you Lord, thank you!” were the words that came from her mouth. I came to find out that she was talking to her daughter. Mrs. Phillips daughter was flying out of New York to go back home to Hong Kong with her husband and their two year daughter, who had all just been home to Iowa to visit. Their flight had taken off, but landed early because the United States had ordered to cease all air traffic.
The rest of the school day went on and after the school day was over I went back to day care to find my mom waiting for me and my sister. This was an odd occurrence because she normally didn’t pick us up until 5:30ish. We went home and watched movies and my mom was on the phone with multiple family members. After we had taken our showers and gotten our pajamas on, my sister went to her room and I went out to get my mom to tell her we were ready to be tucked in.
As I walked out into the living room, I saw my mom, first, crying. That was the first time I had ever seen my mom cry. I really didn’t know what had gone on the whole day and why everyone was acting so weird. As I walked in further, I looked at the TV and sat next to her on the couch. She was watching a news station that was showing coverage of the attacks. I didn’t know the magnitude of what I was watching, but for some reason I knew that it was bad. I lifted my hand to my face and felt tears rolling down my face. I looked up at my mom and the following is the conversation that ensued;
“Mommy,” I whimpered, “Did people die today?”
“Yes Bug.”
“Did bad people do this?”
“Yes Bug.”
“Did the bad people die too?”
“Yes Bug.”
“Are we safe Mommy?”
My mom started crying more and just hugged me tighter than she ever has before.
On September 11, 2001, 2996 innocent people were killed, three buildings were attacked, four planes, full of passengers, crashed, approximately 411 emergency workers were killed, a country came together in awe at what had happened, and an innocent 7 year old realized that bad people existed in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment