What I Wrote Down

25 years ago, I was 12 years old. I didn’t think to write about 9/11 when it happened because, honestly, I was too overwhelmed. There wasn’t time in my mind. But apparently that summer, August to be exact, I saw a piece on the news referencing 9/11 as we approached the first anniversary. And then I wrote about it. I wrote about it in a Hello Kitty journal with a plastic lock on it. 25 years later, here is what I said.

I just watched the news, a special about Sept 11, and I was just thinking about what my kids might ask me about it one day, so I decided to write it all down.

It was break time (so around 10:30 am) when rumors started. Things about the White House on fire and the President dead. No one was quite sure what was going on. But before 4^th period, we all got sat down on the steps and the principal came to talk to us. He said there’s been an accident (a lie, I now know, because by 10:30 am the world knew it wasn’t an accident) and a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I had to ask what these were because I knew them as the Twin Towers, and I’d never heard of the Pentagon. (To this day, I know exactly which boy from my class was sitting behind me who answered my question).

Then we went to chorus, and everyone was talking about if they started blowing up schools, we’d come before public schools because we were smarter. (A crazy thing to think and discuss). We didn’t sing that day.

Rumors floated around the whole day. The towers had tipped over. All of NYC was on fire. But it was all still very unclear. Everyone lacked a true understanding.

At lunch, people were crying, and some parents even came and picked up their kids. My Spanish teacher was a wreck because her sister was supposed to be on one of the planes that hit. But by the end of the day she’d found out her sister had taken a different flight.

I was worried all day, but not scared because I didn’t understand enough to be scared. It wasn’t until we got home and I sat down for the first time in front of the TV that it hit me. All the people, the collapse, everything.

I watched the replay of the fall, and the hit, the fire, the jumping people. And all those firemen parading into the building never to come out again. My mom sent me upstairs to take a shower, and I took it fast. I was worried that while I was in there, all of Rochester (where I lived) would explode.

That night I was still freaked out, but my younger siblings had already taken my parents’ room. So, my twin and I both climbed into my bottom bunk and finally fell asleep.

It was a disaster before smartphones. I remember lining up at the school’s front desk during lunch with everyone else who had relatives in New York City to check in with parents and see if everyone was okay. There were enough images without social media to cause nightmares for a lifetime.

I don’t have kids, but I know kids. And I hope one day they ask me where I was, because it’s important to remember. It’s important to know the past (beyond 30-second social media tributes) so we can maybe, just maybe, better understand the future.