I'll never forget where I was. Mrs Fs fifth grade science class. I remember all the teachers left suddenly and came back crying. Ended up sending us home.
Didn't really sink in what happened for a while cause I was just a kid. But I also had no idea how it would shape my future.
And now every year on this day I climb 110 flights of stairs to remember those that were lost.
Better than mine I was in 6th grade they pulled us all into the gym and wheeled in 3 tvs with the news playing, We were in middle school 4th to 6th grade.
I imagine it was the most traumatic thing that happened until the pandemic. I wonder how that played out for kids in school at the time.
I was in kindergarten in Colorado. Mom turned on the little white TV in the kitchen because she wanted to know if a football player was hurt. And thats when we watched the second plane hit.
I was eating toast. We walked the block to drop me off at school. We made flags with glitter and stars and ripped paper while our teacher cried and kids got taken home one by one.
Mom picked up white carnations and handed them out to people who came into the store, then she had lunch with me in the mostly empty cafeteria. It was the good grilled cheese and tomato soup that day.
Even in Colorado, it was this weird numb feeling. We went up to the mountains for like a week after that day. It was very quite with out any planes.
In Colorado, as well, but I was 16. My dad turned on my bedroom light and said “get up, the world’s on fire.”
I sat in the living room watching the first tower smoke and felt like dad was overselling it. Then, the second hit and the news came in about the Pentagon and the fourth plane that crashed in the field taking every one of those motherfucking heroes with it.
They read the names of famous people who had died. I think one was a producer on Frasier or something. I knew I had to do something, so I pulled out the camcorder/VHS system I had hacked together to make my own movie trailers and set a bunch of news footage to Enya’s ‘Only Time’. That made me feel better.
Then, I went to work at the local library and I was having conversations with adults about it all day. People were coming down from camping trips to get the news. A woman my mom’s age stood at the front desk with me and cried and talked through how stupid she felt reading romance novels and I was 16 so I had no idea what to say to that.
It was a whole day of being professional while all these grownups responded to the crisis at or near my desk.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 15h ago
I'll never forget where I was. Mrs Fs fifth grade science class. I remember all the teachers left suddenly and came back crying. Ended up sending us home.
Didn't really sink in what happened for a while cause I was just a kid. But I also had no idea how it would shape my future.
And now every year on this day I climb 110 flights of stairs to remember those that were lost.