I Remember

10 years ago on September 11th, I had just started my second year at the community college near my home in Illinois.  I was getting ready for work when my mom called and told me to turn on the TV.  A plane had run into one of the World Trade Center towers.  I turned on the TV and watched the footage of the burning building.  I couldn't believe that had happened.  How could that happen?  That's a little low for a plane to be flying around a city.  Maybe something was wrong with the pilot?

I called my dad to see if he had seen the news.  He hadn't.  As I stood there pondering over what could have gone wrong with my dad, the second plane ran into the second tower.  Wah??  Did someone manage to get video of the plane running into the tower and they were just playing it over?  No that can't be it.  I can see the first tower on fire behind the second.  The SECOND tower got hit??  I'm so confused.  What the hell?

My first class that day was calculus and the teacher was this really angry woman that I didn't feel like testing.  I thought about not going into school. I didn't know what was going on.  But then I thought about that teacher and her irrational anger at the world.  I made the choice to go in.  I left the TV on while I got ready and it was so horrible.  People were jumping out of the building.  I could only imagine the fear these people were facing.  

While I was driving into school, I heard that the Pentagon had either been hit by a plane or a bomb.  Not sure which.  Still confused.

When I got to class, only half the students had shown up.  The teacher asked the remaining students if they would be up for a lesson.  We all said no, so she let us go early.  I went to the lobby area of the school where they had set up a bunch of TV's all set to different news channels so I could watch the events unfold. 

I could not believe my eyes when the first tower fell.  All I could think about were all the people in that building.  My second thought was about all the people on the street that they showed staring up at the burning buildings.  The dust in the air was tremendous.  The the second tower fell.  Insantiy.

Then I heard about the fourth crash into the field in Pennsylvania.  By this point, I wasn't sure what was true and was rumor.  I walked around in complete disbelief for the majority of that day.  I wasn't close with anyone living in New York, but I was still numb about the whole situation.  How could something like this happen in the United States?  Don't we have excellent safeguards against stuff like this?  Come to think of it, how could the US prevent other stuff like this from happening?  We can't be everywhere at every time of the day to 100% guard US soil.

Suddenly I was afraid for my family in and around Chicago.  What if there was another big attack?  Oh the stress that surrounded that whole situation and I didn't even know anyone who was there.  It just struck me as so intense that an attack had occured on US soil.  Is this what people in 3rd world countries feel like every day?  At any moment, their village could be attacked and they wouldn't have any police to run to.  Hell, it might be their very own government that's doing the pilaging.

Life is scary.  We've got to make the best of it.

I thought this 9/11 timeline at Wikipedia was really interesting if anyone wants to look it over.