As this blog's purpose is broadening horizons and September 11th is an important date not only for my country but for my state, New York, I've decided to post about a day that has deeply affected my life: the day the Twin Towers went down.
On September 11, 2001, I was eleven years old. I had just started the seventh grade, and I was looking forward to turning twelve, playing soccer all fall, hanging out with my friends, and the very first Harry Potter movie coming out. The word "terrorism" wasn't part of my vocabulary.
That day started normally enough, but shortly after I got to school, strange things started happening. I can't remember if an announcement was made over the loudspeaker or if some of the school aides were going around telling people, but all of the teachers were told to turn off their classroom televisions and/or to keep them off until further notice. Teachers stepped outside their classrooms to talk to other teachers, and at first they all seemed confused, but then a tension slowly spread between them. Students' parents started arriving at the school, signing them out early. I wondered what on earth could have happened that was so bad. I had no idea that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center Towers and that both buildings had collapsed. I had no idea of the chaos and confusion taking place less than thirty miles away.
Come lunchtime my classmates and I that were enrolled in our school's Gifted and Talented program headed towards our Russian classroom for lunch instead of to the cafeteria with the other students. Everyone started discussing the weird things that had been happening, wondering what was going on. After we badgered our Russian teacher enough, she told us what had happened: in New York City, two planes had flown into the Twin Towers. The towers collapsed. As a bunch of eleven and twelve year olds, we couldn't understand this. How could someone accidentally fly a plane into a building? How could a plane make such a big building collapse? What about the people inside?
In the days, weeks, and months that followed, as they replayed the video of what happened over and over again on TV, we would learn the horrifying answers to those questions. What happened on 9/11 wasn't an accident, it was intentional. There were people out there that wanted to harm us. The force of the plane hitting the building and the damage it caused, the fires and explosions it started, made the building unable to stand. The people inside the planes and who didn't manage to make it out of the buildings died. Some died instantly, some jumped to escape being burned alive, and others... we'll never know.
When you live on Long Island in New York, as I do, your life is entwined with New York City. Your parents, relatives, and/or friends live and/or work in "the City." Someone you know ends up in there almost every weekend for one thing or another. Chances are, you end up in the City frequently yourself, and as a child, I did. My aunt, who had no children of her own, took my younger sister and I into the City frequently. We'd go to Broadway shows, museums like the American Museum of Natural History, landmarks like the top of the Empire State Building - she even managed a couple of times, through her employer, to get us she got us box seats for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. We loved it.
Of course, after September 11th, all of that stopped. Instead, we heard constantly about the chaos that followed the Towers' fall. We heard the stories of people we knew who were there - or who were supposed to be there. My aunt who had taken us into the City so many times had worked in the 7 World Trade Center building, which collapsed when debris from the Towers fell on it and started fires that couldn't be extinguished due to low water pressure. She was supposed to be in the building that day, but eye surgery she'd had a couple of days before kept her out of work - she was safe at home. My other aunt saw both planes hit. She walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to get home, since public transportation was mostly shut down, and she didn't arrive there until late evening, even though she left before 10am. When she arrived home, she was covered in ash.
In the United States today, it's common for people to say, "Never forget," in regards to September 11, 2001. And though it's incredibly selfish of me, as a New Yorker, I honestly wish I could forget. I wish a chill didn't run down my spine every single time I see 9:11 on a digital clock. I wish I didn't wonder, every single time I hear an airplane pass overhead, if it isn't flying too low. I wish I didn't always think about how my friend's father-in-law never got to see his son get married or his grandchild being born, because he died as a First Responder trying to save other lives. I wish I wasn't terrified to travel on the anniversary of 9/11 each other, afraid of cruel and unhinged people that may use the date for smaller attacks, just to remind us that we'll never be able to feel safe again.
I wish, more than anything, that such hate, the kind that drives people to perpetrate such horrid crimes, didn't exist. I know it does, and I know it's going to, but I wish it didn't.
