cecelia

9-11.

Well, what can you say, that hasn't been said about this day? Unfortunately, it's burned into everyone's mind as a bad day, I mean, you think of September the 11th and your mind automatically goes to where you were when it happened, who you were with. Of course, I wasn't going to have the 11th go by without at least thinking about it, but it occured to me that I've never shared my 9-11 story, and since I have nothing else to post about at 12:30 in the morning, it may as well be this. (God damn, my sentences are long....too many commas)

So, let's see. On 9-11-01, I was in my freshman year of college at UWP. My roommate had an early class, so she was gone by 7:45. It was my day to sleep in, I didn't have class until 10. I was awakened by noise in the hall of the dorm around 8:55, and immediately upset because I could have slept til 9:30 and still made it to class on time. I got up and opened the door of the room, and looked across the hall at our Resident Assistant, Chantelle. Her door, as usual, was open. But instead of seeing the happy, perky RA I was used to, she was standing in the middle of her room, with the remote control in one and and the phone in the other, clutched to her chest, and she was crying as she watched the TV. A bit too inocently, I asked "What's wrong?" and she waved me in, still crying, and still watching. I walked over to her room and stood next to her and saw the footage of Tower 1, complete with the gaping hole and frantic news reporters sputtering out information as fast as they could give it. And like the rest of the country, I was in shock. Chantelle, in a moment of patriotic emotion, put her arm around me and we watched together. It was not long after, that reporters were informing the public that rather than a directional error, it appeared a terrorist act had taken place. And I won't forget the sinking feeling I felt. I went from innocent patriot to fucking angry American in a second, realizing that we'd been had. I walked back across the hall to get a box of tissues for Chantelle, whose were gone, and flipped on our TV as I came in the room. It was within 30 seconds of my turning on the TV in our room, that I heard yelling - from the TV, from Chantelle, and from rooms up and down my 4th floor hall. The second plane had hit. But I didn't know that. I thought that the news was showing the FIRST plane hitting, that it was just an "instant replay" so to speak. But, how dumb was I? No news camera had caught the first one on film - DUH! And I heard the man on the news say that it appeared a second plane had crashed into Tower 2, and it can be ruled out at this point that it was of pilots error. I backed up slowly under my roommates loft, where our futon was, and slowly sat down, not removing my eyes from the TV screen. The commotion on the floor of my dorm was loud. And Chantelle had now come into our room and sat next to me. We shared that box of tissues. And I remember that neither of us said a word. We just stared. What more could we do, you know? Classes were dismissed and cancelled for the rest of the day - we spent the rest of the day in the dorm - calling family, calling friends, just reaching out to people...saying the things that thousands of people would never say to those victims again.

Jon and I visited Ground Zero 11 months after the attacks happened, and walked over the site, looking at the huge gaping holes in the ground. And I was heartbroken. It as much more real to me looking at it, looking at where so many people died, than seeing images on TV.

I'm sure no one will ever forget where they were, what they were doing, who they were with. Personally, I'd rather be telling my kids and grandkids where I was when something great happened, but life is like that.

So, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.


O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave