9/11…8 years ago…feels like yesterday

This was published in The Spectator a year ago. It is what my day was like in New York on 9/11/2001:

I was sitting in eleventh grade math class. The class loud-mouth stormed into the room. What idiotic thing was going to come out of his mouth this time? Who fought who? Do we care? Then he announced it.

We turned on the television. I thought it was an accident, something minor. Then our world came crashing down.

A girl in my class of 20 or so stood up. “My dad works there.” The room was silent, except for the gulps.

I went on with my day making jokes; my way of coping with awkwardness. Two class periods went by. Teachers were banned from turning on the television sets in every classroom. They were told to ignore it, but it was too big to be ignored.

Finally noon rolled around, and one teacher decided to address it. She said that this day would be like the day Kennedy was shot; we would all remember when and where we were in our lives. Then she uttered words that I hadn’t really thought about.

“When that phone rings and someone is called to the office to go home, we will know something is wrong.”

Phone rings. Guess who is the first to go?

I walked out of the room. My buddy from the baseball team patted me on the back.

All I could think about was that my dad was dead. One of my two aunts was dead. One of my three uncles was dead. My grandfather was dead. Someone close to me had definitely died. They all worked there.

I walked through the hallways of Monroe-Woodbury High School in Central Valley, NY more scared than I have ever been in my life, knowing my world had just been shaken 50.47 miles away in Manhattan.

September 11th, 2001 was the worst day of my life.

I got to the front of the school after a walk that seemed like an eternity. There was my mom, crying in the middle of my school. Surely the worst had happened. Around her were the toughest kids you’d ever met on the ground in tears, trying to find a way to get out of school to find their parents.
The kids that never lost a fight, the ones that never showed emotion, were pleading with police officers and school administrators. They wanted to know if everything was alright with their family members that they couldn’t reach.

I finally approached my mom and barely uttered out “Tell me everyone’s alright.” She reassured me that she heard from my dad, uncles and aunts, but that the father of one of my aunts was still missing. He worked in the Twin Towers.

My dad watched the second plane hit. His office was in New Jersey, literally across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center. He described it as a “Russian Warzone from a movie” to me. His normal job was to walk the streets of Manhattan, but he had meetings that day, so he was one of the lucky ones.

I was lucky. My dad was able to come home early from work that day. The girl in my class, she lost her father.

My dad decided to get the oil changed on his car and get our swimming pool water checked. I didn’t get it. He wasn’t going to let them win. They weren’t ruining his day.

Living near West Point, the United States Military Academy, that night helicopters flew over my house with spotlights roaming the neighborhoods. Then I saw the face of Osama Bin Laden for the first time.
Seeing the person responsible for the worst day of my life began a period of insomnia that I can’t recount how long it lasted.

Forgive me if I think you don’t understand why this day is so significant. I know you think you get it; but you don’t.

Just like I don’t understand what it was like for people 50.47 miles closer than me. My friends from New York City couldn’t talk about it for months, I understood why.

This day should never be forgotten. I thought that at any second someone close to me would be dead; or even me. September 11th, 2001 lost more lives than accounted for. That day a part of me died and has been left there forever.

I had never been more terrified in my life.

Until the day I die, I am certain I will never forget September 11th, 2001, and neither should you.