Writer's Block: 9/11
What were you doing on September 11th, 2001? How do the events of that day hold meaning for you now?
I was in seventh grade and coming back from P.E. class after the first plane hit one of the towers. My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Santos, was crying and wouldn't tell us why - she did keep saying "New York" and "crash" but nothing specific. My classmates and I had been laughing earlier about something, and after seeing Mrs. Santos like that, we were quiet and all wondering what was going on.
My class then went to Social Studies where my teacher, Mrs. Zavertnik, had the television on, and she was telling us what had happened when one of my classmates shouted something about another plane. We looked at the television and saw the second plane hit the second tower. And then the fireball from the explosion of the plane coming out the side of the tower a few minutes later. We all freaked out, except for one of my classmates who made a crude joke and promptly got the wrath of the rest of the class and Mrs. Zavertnik herself.
We continued on with classes, and then about an hour before lunch, people started getting pulled out of school by family members. St. Rose was on lockdown by this point, so we were going through routines as if it was raining, but it was sunny outside. Right before I went to lunch with my class, the office called me and told me that I was going home. Going to the office, I found that my brothers and my cousin were also being signed out, all by my cousin's mom. We went home and I called my mom about my aunt signing us out before I made us all lunch and my aunt went back to work.
My mom came home and she explained to the boys - and me, since I was still rather confused on some details - about what happened. My dad came home frantic because his mom, one of his sisters, and a cousin live in Brooklyn and not very far from where Manhattan is. It took a few tries, but we got a hold of my grandma and she said that she was actually going to the Twin Towers to take care of some business, but a police officer had stopped her after the first plane hit one of the towers. She was fine, thankfully, and that helped my parents to relax.
It was so eerie to watch the news, and the house was rather quiet. Pretty much all the televisions in the house were on the news when the towers collapsed. My mom and I were cooking and my dad was talking to my mom in Creole when the towers went down. It was just...it was crazy. It was unbelievable. To see that...I honestly thought it was someone accidentally demolishing a huge tower and realizing their mistake too late. It was also terrifying to see people before the towers collapsed jumping out of the windows of the towers, waving, trying to get help. I kept on walking around my driveway to just think and get a break from the news. Pretty much any channel aside from one with cable was talking about it, and it was so morbid to sit there and watch and drink it all in.
To this day, my mom still has the tape that recorded the news and live recording of the second plane crashing into the second tower, and she also has the towers collapsing on tape, as well. She used to tape her soap operas and the like and the news report interrupted the daily soaps, and she hasn't taped or even looked at the content on the tape since discovering that she had it on tape. She also has the newspapers from that time put away.