Where Were You?

I was teaching. It was my first year, actually. We were just a week into the school year. And I have to tell you the things I remember about it.

The wall at the back of my room was a bright royal blue. I had put a bunch of quotations up on the wall, probably more for me than for my students. But I really remember that wall.

I remember that I had on this long, brown dress with a blue floral pattern. It was a spaghetti strap dress, so I had a white t-shirt underneath and a white cardigan over top. I'm sure I was wearing white Keds. Actually, it reminds me of an outfit Courtney Cox wore on Friends. And I can now admit that the outfit was hideous. Although I'm pretty sure I thought it was adorable.

A security guard at the school came to my door and knocked. I opened it up, and he said that we were in "Def Con Blah Blah Blah" or some other nonsense. I obviously had no idea what he was talking about. And then he said, since as a silly civilian his Def Con explanation obviously wasn't enough, that the Twin Towers in New York had been hit and the Pentagon had been hit and the United States was under attack. I honestly think he said, "We are under attack." I said, "You're kidding, right?" And he got pretty disgusted with me and told me about how serious he was. Hello, drama king. Maybe he shouldn't have been so over the top considering there were children present.

So I went to my computer and pulled up a video feed. I can't remember what website I went to. Maybe CNN? And there it was. Actual video footage of the towers crumbling down to the ground. My students were in state, so I let them come gather around my desk. I mean, they were going to see this, right? This footage would play out in front of them over and over again. I can't deny, it was extremely shocking.

So you can imagine that not much teaching went on after that. They mostly wanted to talk. Class after class came in. I thought surely someone would cancel the rest of the day. And parents did come to gather their children. But we held out to the end. The next day school was actually canceled. I didn't know. I came driving up to the school, only to see it was destitute of any living creature. So I went home and changed. I came back a little later and did some work.

But really, it didn't quite register. I got a lot of phone calls and emails from friends, what with me living so close to D.C. and the Pentagon. It was all anyone could think about or talk about. Still, it was sort of this strange thing that didn't feel quite true.

Until one day, a few weeks later, I was running on the treadmill at the gym. And there were the televisions right in front of me. I think I'd seen the footage a hundred times over at that point, but there were the towers again, and you could see the people jumping. The towers were there and then they were coming down, down, down. And there was smoke and debris and everything was covered. The whole lower end of the city was awash in ash. There I was, in the middle of a run, and I was crying. In public. At the gym, of all places. Just crying. That was the moment it hit me. All these people had suffered and died. It seemed so incredibly senseless. Violent. Final. I couldn't help myself. The tears just came, and I wiped them away and kept on running.

So that is my 9/11 story. Whatever the reasons, who ever the cause, I remember. God bless America and the people who defend her. Especially the people who defend her.