I remember exactly where I was.... I remember exactly how my day unfolded. It was a Tuesday, and I had a finance class that started at 9am. I drove myself to campus just like I did every Tuesday and Thursday. It was in the parking lot before class that my friend Christian flagged me down as we were walking to class. He told me that he heard on the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We were both just kind of like HUH. I mean, if you watch the news down in South Florida, it's not unheard of to hear of a plane hitting a building or crashing into something. There are lot of people with private planes around here, so neither one of us really thought much of it.
We went to class and sat through it for over an hour. After class, while walking to my car go come home, I looked at my cell phone and saw that I had about 30 missed phone calls - which was really unusual. I remember trying to call my voice mail and not being able to get a signal on my phone. I put on the radio as I drove home and that's when I heard the announcement that all planes were being told to land immediately at the nearest airport. That's when I realized that something really bad was happening. I was terrified. I only lived 10 minutes from my college campus, and I remember driving home and looking into the sky. The airport is near both my house and my college campus, so I could see planes in the air - probably circling while they waited for clearance to land.... but it terrified me that here I am hearing that planes are being grounded and in the meantime, they're flying directly overhead.
I sped home, walked into my parents' house, flung open the door and screamed WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. My dad was sitting on the couch in front of the TV. I remember the exact position he was sitting in - kind of leaning forward. He looked over at me when I walked in but didn't say a word. Instead he turned his head back to the TV and that's when I saw the South Tower (2 WTC) collapse on TV.
Nobody knew what to do. I finally got a signal on my phone and called a friend - who was freaking out. I remember not knowing if I should go in to work. I finally decided I should.... so I drove to work. When I got there, everyone was sitting in the break room surrounding the TV. After about an hour at work, my boss sent everybody home. I literally watched TV all day long. I remember watching Peter Jennings on the news and a pen had exploded or something because he had ink all over himself. I remember talking to friends and just being in complete awe of what had just happened.
I knew then that something had happened that would forever change the course of history. It was something that would inevitably effect everybody's life forever. Nothing was ever going to be the same again. Everything had changed in the course of 2 hours. America was attacked and America was bleeding. I remember being scared to go to work, to go to the mall, to go anywhere where there would be a large grouping of people. That fear stuck around for a long time. Eventually, I went to a movie theater. I remember we saw Zoolander, and it felt so weird to go and just watch a movie and laugh for the first time in weeks. Slowly, things got back to "normal." But even "normal" was different - it was a new normal.
American flags were everywhere. On cars, on buildings, on houses, on people. I had a friend from Guyana who told me he was scared to go out in public because of the color of his skin. He was terrified people would look at him and judge him as if he had anything to do with what had happened, so he didn't leave the house without an American flag on his shirt. He probably single handedly kept Old Navy's 4th of July flag shirt industry in business.
Where were you on September 11th? I bet you remember just as well as I do. It's amazing to think that 10 years have gone by. A decade. It's crazy. When I see those images on TV it feels like just yesterday. All those emotions come flooding in as if it just happened. It's impossible to comprehend the loss experienced by so many people. Not just the people directly effected by September 11th, but all the others as well. God Bless America..... let us never forget September 11, 2001.
