I haven't really done a 9/11 retrospective before, but I kind of feel as if I should today.
I was in my junior year of high school. I went to Seminary—a sort of Bible study class (I'm LDS)—every morning before high school. And I mean every morning. I was that girl with perfect attendance (which I eventually messed up in December of my Senior year, btw, because a friend of mine got on Jeopardy) and so I was up and learning things while most of my friends were still sleeping, lucky them. So it was on the way home from the church, on my mom's car radio that my brother and I first heard about what was going on on the East Coast. It's significant to me, for some reason, that I was coming straight from a church activity when I first heard about this.
The details were fuzzy, though. We'd heard that a plane had gone into one of the Twin Towers, but that was really all we knew up to that point. We went to school surprised, but not particularly shaken. Of course the more details we heard throughout the day, the worse things got.
What I think was interesting was that officially, the teachers weren't supposed to tell us anything. The idea was that they wanted to keep us calm, and somehow in the highest rounds of legislation (AKA the principal—perhaps even the District Leader?) had decided that that would be achieved by giving us no information whatsoever. Thankfully the teachers knew us—and trusted us—better than that, and did their best to keep us informed on the progression of things.
I was fairly numb most of that day. I spent a lot of time holding onto my friend Russ' desk, because he was the most solid thing in close proximity, and he was in most of my classes. Some people had strange and utterly inappropriate reactions to the news, but such is life. There were a lot of whisperings of war and of the draft, and my ever-logical mind was going down a list of my brothers' and guy friends' names, listing off reasons why they might be able to escape the draft—flat feet, bad backs, no depth-perception, too old... It wasn't that I didn't want the country safe... I just wanted my friends safer.
The only person I personally knew who was in the Towers that day, was the older brother of a friend of mine who I'd grown apart from, and that was especially strange. We had a lot of awkward air between us, and I don't think I ever told her to her face that I was sorry for her loss. That her brother, who used to give me rides home from school once in a while and left a legacy of local community work, was an amazing person who won't be forgotten.
9/11 is being pushed around and stretched in every way possible by politics lately, especially thanks to the upcoming elections, but personally, what I'm thinking about today is the community spirit that was everywhere after the fact.
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It's always strange the memories that 9/11 sparks for me.
It started like every other day. I was in 1st period French class when our principal came over the loudspeaker and interrupted a usually unproductive class. She said very vaguely that the whispers and reports spreading through the school have not been confirmed and that no one should be concerned just yet. When we got any kind of official news she would let us know.
We blew it off, because most of us had no clue what she was talking about. I went to second period US History. The room was dark. The television was on, and the first period class were sitting with open mouths on the desks and on the floor. It was somber and oddly quiet. That's when I knew whatever happened had to be bad.
We all thought it was an accident. A plane malfunction of some sort. Seeing it live, hearing it reported live was a mess of confusion and uncertainty. And then, as I watched the television, the second plane hit and the rest of the day became a strange blur of numbness.
I don't have to tell you how surreal it was to see that. I don't think I'll ever forget that image.
Yeah, I think I got the impression it was an accident at first, too... before they knew. They tried to shut down all the TV's at our school, but they came back on mid-day, I think. Mostly I remember holding onto Russ' desk. Like... all day. He was my security item of the day.
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