I Will Not Forget

On 9/11/08, It will have been 7 years since the attacks. See below a reprint of my recount of where I was on that fateful day, as I had blogged about in 2006 (with some typos cleaned up and spacing).

Where was I?
Tuesday, September 11, 2001 is a day I will never forget. Some details have fuzzied but the impact is still the same. It changed my life as I knew it.

It had been a week or so after I broke up with my first boyfriend and we were not getting along. I went to my logic design class, then the dining hall to pick up a quick bite (I cannot recall if I went to the dining hall before the class or not). The cashier told me she just heard a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought to myself 'Is this another drunk pilot slamming into a building?' She gave me no details. I ate my food and went to my Discrete Math discussion, a class I thoroughly hated, hoping we weren't going to have another quiz.

Walking to the fine arts building (where ironically the math class was held), I saw some people making a commotion but thought nothing of it. Walking into the classroom a few minutes early, I noticed there were only a couple of other students in there, waiting for the TA to arrive. The murmured, "Did you hear what happened?" "Do you think we'll have class today?" "What's going on?"
Then, the TA strolled in saying,

"They're gone..the towers are gone."

My mouth gaped in shock. I said "what do you mean?" he said,
"There are not there anymore. Destroyed."

The TA dismissed the class. I ignorantly, thought to myself "HUh?, hey no class." As I walked down the stairs, I saw a campus notice explaining why classes were canceled. My mind raced to the fact that my grandma was flying to or from California really soon...I raced to my dorm room..my roommate had a note on the door saying she was in her bf's room in the basement and that I should come down there. I dialed my parents and heard a busy signal.

I ran down to where my roommate was and asked, what happened? Then I caught the footage on the laptop of the smoke emitting from a buildings from prior footage on CBS.... and then I saw the footage of the first tower fall...and then the second... I felt nauseous...and angry...and scared, so darn scared. Later, I heard about the damage at the Pentagon and the plane that went down in Pennsylvania and I knew we were at war. I will never forget.

We ate all our meals around the news craving answers and action. When President Bush made his speech on Sept 12, I felt some comfort and I knew that this was the start of a long fight. Things had changed drastically in the world and they would never be the same. Moreover, our eyes were opened wider than ever to those who had been plotting and attacking us subtlety in the years before this punctuation mark of an attack.

I will never forget. The anger. The sadness. The atrocities these non-humans committed against the United States of America, they envied and hated so much.

I will never forget.