Friday, 11 September 2009

• 8 years ago

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  This is in response to the above link.

   

  I remember everything from that day. I was sitting in my Freshman year health class, middle section of four-seater tables, second chair on the right with my friend Nick sitting next to me on the left. All of a sudden a student aid from the main office came rushing into the room, whispered something into to the teachers ear and left. It was at that instant that the teacher went as pale as a ghost and said that the days lesson plan was cancelled, before turning on the TV.

  What I saw I will never forget. Ever. I saw the planes crash into the towers and then later saw them fall. I remember Nick looking at me and saying, "Oh my god! We are all so fucked!" the minute the towers fell. All day we watched as the events of what would be the beginning to a very rough 8 years ahead, began. I remember that while I was sitting in my health class the principal came and took a couple of girls out of class. They never came back to that class, or the school, and to this day I still hope that whomever it was that they were being pulled out of class for made it out and was safe.

  I remember the complete silence that had fell over the hallways and classrooms in the school. It was so quiet that you could have surely heard a pin drop. We were all children who were around when the WTC was attacked the first time, whether we remember it or not is another story, and none of us ever thought it would happen again. In fact, we, along with a majority of the country, were even naive enough to believe that no one would ever be so bold as to attack us on our own soil.

  Clearly, we were wrong.

  Perhaps two of the most significant things that I do remember happened after 9/11. The first one was when my brother and I were driving down the road towars the powerplant in our town and we both commented on how much the smoke coming from the smoke stcks looked like the smoke from the Twin Towers. I now can never look at the stacks without thinking about this. Strange how such a thing can change your outlook on things.

  The next event is no doubt simply a fluke but it still left an impresion on me. I remember I was walking outside to my car the day after, when out of nowhere a big cloud of smoke and "debris" came up out of nowhere and blew down my street and across the field at the end of my block. It shook me up so badly that I sat in my car a few moments before leaving. It shook me up because it so closely resembled what I had saw on the TV the day before. Though I knew it would be phisically impossible for the smoke to carry that far and be that thick, it still shook me up. It was the "what if?" that did it. Add to that the nightmares I had, and still do have, and the endless stream off footage that was shown of the towers and of the people jumping from them, and it is easy to see why this day bothers me so much. I would be hard pressed to find one who isn't bothered by all of it.

  No, I will never forget aout what happened that day or the days, months and years that followed. Neither do I think I would want to, because what could be learned by forgetting it? Nothing. Only by remembering these events can we hope to never have them repeated anywhere else in the world.

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