In a sick sort of way, I find it fascinating to hear people's stories about what they were doing when JFK was shot, and now – what people were doing on September 11.
School had just started for the year, and, as usual, I had waited until the last minute to make my copies. I had first period conference, so I was in the teacher's lounge/copy room on the 2nd floor. There is a TV above the copy machine that usually was on CNN or Fox News. Sure enough…. There I am, standing at the copy machine, watching the news, and all the chaos broke out. The anchors didn't really know what to say, nobody really knew what was going on, and before we knew it, the second tower fell. Crazy. I went back to my classroom and turned on the TV in there and continued to watch it until the bell rang at 10:34. Administration sent out an email telling us not to have our TV on, but I was like – "Um ,sorry. But this is a pretty big deal and will be in history books someday, so we can't shelter the kids from everything." And we went about our day, with the TV in the background. Then went home and watched the coverage for hours.
I still have all those emails that people sent out right afterwards. So many of them just made me so proud to be an American – the stories about the firefighters and police officers, the strangers helping each other, the soldiers going to war for us. I think that September 11, while a horrible tragedy, helped me understand what a magnificent country we live in.
So, where were you?
4 comments:
I was on my way to work. My co-worker "Ricky" (his real name is Jesus and his middle name was Enrique but we called him Ricky) gave me a ride to work. I did not hear about the events on our ride together as he enjoyed listening to Tejano music while driving. I arrived at work and Colin told me the news. He always is the one that breaks the bad news to me. Debbie downer, that Colin (love him anyway). The only TV at our place of business was in the warehouse. We all huddled around that tiny TV and watched as the second tower fell. Colin and I went to his house for lunch to watch more coverage. I will never forget a co-worker saying something along the lines of "business for us may pick up." You see, that place of business built circuit board cleaning machines and there were some businesses in the area of ground zero that would probably need to clean up their boards and what-not. I thought that was so insensitive and vulgar. Rachel, I went out with you a few nights after 9-11 to celebrate your birthday. Remember that? What a bummer birthday that was. Sorry I wrote a blog on your blog.
Interestingly enough I had read that Michael Jordan was returning to basketball after retiring and turned the tv on that morning to see more reports on it. The rest is history.
I was sitting on my futon in my efficiency apartment watching Martha Stewart before I left for school.
I was working at Peoples, wearing pink scrubs, with no tv at all and a boss who didn't think we needed to bring in a tv to watch, quite possibly, the most important/influential events of our life. All the info we had was what customers coming in were telling us, until I got home later and watched the coverage. Little did I know at the time, the events that morning would impact my life much more than I initially thought...
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