
I just turned 16 when the September 11th terrorist attacks happened. I was in Mrs. Craig’s choir class. We were of course having song practice, when all of the sudden, an administrator came to the room. With the administrator privately speaking with Mrs. Craig for several minutes, we students began to shoot the breeze. Eventually, she came back in the room with this stunned and frozen look. “They want us to turn on the TV,” she said. There the twin towers were, burning…smoking. We all thought a plane had accidentally crashed. Being the self-absorbent teens we were, we just said “Whoa, that’s crazy,” and kept socializing. As the school day went by, it slowly but surely occurred to us that something more was awry, as many teachers halted class and some students were in frantic fear that their traveling or New Yorker loved ones were in danger or harmed. Some teachers tried to keep students calm by maintaining normalcy and continuing with class. Others kept the TV on and gave students the option to sit in hallway if the images were too difficult to watch. What’s odd is that I can recall other’s reactions fairly well, but not my own. I can’t remember if I stayed in class, or went in the hallway…I don’t know. One of my more distinct memories is how we were all in the history room at some point, and when a group of kids busted out in laughter from their own casual conversation, a student yelled “What are you doing?!! Do you not understand what’s going on? This is us!! Us!!,” as she pointed to the screen and the tumbling towers. It was in that moment I looked up at the television and realized I missed something.
