Posted by
Dave on Monday, September 11, 2006 12:01:51 PM
In September of 2001 I was teaching ESL classes at night for a local community college. I was living in a small two-bedroom townhouse with my brother and his wife as they were building a new home and had already sold the other.
On September 11, 2001 I was awake but not really up when my brother, a former Army reservist, who rarely cries if ever, came in my room with tears in his eyes. He told me someone had just flown planes into each of the World Trade Center Towers and we, as a nation, were under attack. He had been watching news of the first tower while getting ready for work. He watched in real time as the second plane hit and was deeply impacted.
Confused and a little in disbelief, I turned on my TV and watched the rest of the morning’s events unfold. I couldn’t believe the Pentagon was hit, and I was extremely shocked to watch the towers come down. I was saddened and angry. What in the world was going on?
The rest of the day was strange. I couldn’t leave the TV. My brother went to work but I think ended up closing early. It was just too weird and no one knew what was happening or what was going to happen.
I tried to get in touch with my girlfriend (wife now) but she was still in class (grad school). She didn’t know what had happened til she went back to her apartment for lunch and found her roommates crying in front of the TV. I’ll never forget how angry I was when she said she went back to class that afternoon and none of her professors even acknowledged that anything had happened. They never did.
I knew it was a day that would never be forgotten. I still have my journal entry from that night. I ended with the following: “surely the world will never be the same”.
I was right.
Ya'll come back now, ya hear!