No one needs to tell me to "always remember."
No one needs to tell me to "never forget."
Forgetting what happened on September 11, 2001 is impossible.
What happened that morning & all the days, weeks, months, years that followed continues to affect our day to day.
Its in the way we think, the way we perceives others, the way we perceives ourselves...it is most definitely in the way we travel...
It was the first week of 8th grade. We were sitting in class when an announcement came over the loud speaker. Planes hitting the twin towers? what? what kind of idiot pilot slams into a building like that? what an unfortunate accident!...thats what we were thinking.
I was also thinking wow. I've been to the world trade center before. My aunt worked there. My mom worked there. I figured there was some damage done, but it never crossed my mind that it could be serious...
but then it got serious because another announcement came on that another plane hit the second tower.
It was getting "all the way real."
In the hours that followed parents started picking up their kids. There was just this cloud of panic in the air.
I knew my mom was home. She worked at WTC, but had been out on disability for awhile.
I figured my dad might be home too as he had been working nights...and i waited for that call to the office. I was waiting for them to call for my brother & I to head to the office to go home, but that call never came. I, being only 13, remember huffing and puffing the 5 minutes home, annoyed that no one had come to get me. I walked into the house and saw my parents glued to the television...i was pissed. If you guys are home why didn't you come get us? you're just sitting here?! blah blah blah
then I remembered my aunt...she worked at WTC...on the 100-something floor...they hadn't heard from her all day.
Here I was concerned about being picked up...how selfish of me right? but I was so young & naive.
I didn't really grasp the seriousness of this all until my brother & I tried to watch tv & even cartoon network was tuned into the news.
where was I going with this?
oh right!
ok! so...my aunt (as some of you may know) is alive & well. We didn't hear from her all day, but thats because she was walking from manhattan to queens. She was late for work that morning & her train pulled into WTC just as things were getting crazy so it didn't even open the doors...it just took them elsewhere & let them off...
to put things into perspective
because the towers were so tall, and because the elevator rides were so long they formed elevator groups. My aunt missed her elevator group that day. As the story goes, everyone in her elevator group died.
9/11/01 is impossible for her to forget.
my sister's friend who worked down there was running for his life. He turned around to help some people. He got trampled to death.
9/11/01 is impossible for his friends & family to forget.
My mother left everything from her cubicle there. pictures of my brother & I, a tv radio...all things that I had seen & touched.
9/11/01 is impossible for me to forget.
9 Years later I was getting onto the E train. I looked down & saw a lunchbox under the seat. I moved to another seat. I watched as everyone walked onto the train, saw the lunch box & avoided it. It was just a lunchbox. Someone was probably lunch-less now...but we take no chances.
9/11/01 is impossible for us to forget.
this was kind of rambly, but I hope you got the point.
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