By the time I realized what was going on that Tuesday morning, the towers had already fallen.
I had moved to Texas only three weeks before, moving into a small apartment on campus with girls who would soon become some of my best friends. Due to the influx of student move-ins by 9/11 I still didn't have my phone hooked up. I was very literally on my own for the first time in my life, living 2,000 miles away from my family and friends. For me, 9/11 was a defining moment in my life for a lot of reasons.
My schedule that semester was daily Latin class at 8 a.m., followed by various other classes, including a political science class at 9:30 CST. I was in Latin when the towers were hit so I didn't have any idea what was going on. I headed over to my political science class which was held in a large lecture hall facing a screen that was hooked up to a computer. The screen was replaying, over and over, a smoky scene with something in the air flying through the smoke.
I remember sitting down in my seat, watching the screen, wondering to myself (having NO IDEA what had happened, and having NO CONCEPT that it COULD happen) what that bird was doing.
I kid you not.
I thought the 2nd plane hitting the south tower was a bird.
The angle of that particular video was strange, and grainy, so I didn't understand what I was seeing. Remember, this was 2001, web videos weren't all over the place like they are now. I barely used email back then and was blogging at Diaryland.
People trickled into class and the professor said, "In light of what has happened at the World Trade Center…" I don't remember what else he said because suddenly I realized what I was looking at and it was like a weight of fear had fallen on me. The professor explained what had happened and then dismissed us.
Outside underneath the overhang of the liberal arts building, someone had set up a TV that was showing CNN or something. A big group of us stood around the TV gaping at the screen.
Since I had two hours before my next class, I hightailed it back to the apartment where we all sat on the couch staring at the TV watching the live coverage. The four of us grew to respect the unflagging persistance of reporters like Peter Jennings for staying there and reporting on what was going on without breaks or anything. We watched the coverage almost non stop for the rest of the week as recovery began. We watched as the body count and missing persons count was up in the high tens of thousands and were stunned as it lowered and lowered – who could have survived that?? To this day, I am stunned that the loss of life was not significantly higher.
I remember calling home on my roommate Cindy's phone that evening. My phone wasn't hooked up for another week after that.
Later that month, realizing that life was too short, I changed my major to art.
My entire adulthood has been spent under the spectre of 9/11. I really feel like I lost a lot of innocence that day, realizing that evil really is out in the world. "These things just don't happen here!" Yes, they do. We're constantly reminded of them whether it's on the news telling us about yet another suicide bomber or as we get scanned in an airport. We shouldn't forget that this evil is out there, but we shouldn't let it define us either.
God bless America, and bless those who lost their lives: the first responders to the attacks, the firemen, police officers, Port Authority officers, the people at the Pentagon, the people on the highjacked flights, especially the people on Flight 93 who were the first people to fight back. And of course, bless all those who must live without their loved ones who died that day.
Here's something I just found today: On September 12, 2001, our national anthem was played during the changing of the Buckingham Palace Guard.