9-11

Eight years ago I was a sophomore sitting in my World History class at Franklin County High School. We were having a relatively normal class period when a teacher from the classroom next door came in and told us a plane had crashed into The World Trade center. We all just looked at him, silent. A few students managed to blurt out "what?". His answer, "they suspect a terrorist attack", triggered a switch that forced us all out of our seats, down the hall and into his classroom to watch the footage (the television in our class was broken). At first I didn't know exactly what to think, I just stared at the image on the TV, that image that we all have burned into our memories. Within a couple minutes the second plane crashed into the second tower. For a second I thought they were just replaying footage that someone had caught of the first plane. I'm a very optimistic person so up until this point I had been certain that this was just a horrible, tragic accident. Once I realized that I had just witness a second plane crash I lost all optimism. Our country, the greatest country in the world, was being attacked by terrorists. I stepped out of the classroom into the hallway pulled out my old Nokia cell phone and called my mom. I don't remember exactly what was said but I do know that I begged her to let me come home from school, she wouldn't allow it. The rest of the school day consisted of walking into the classroom, the teacher taking roll, then turning on the TV. I remember the cameramen zooming in on the people who were jumping out of the buildings before they fell. That was by far the MOST disturbing thing I had ever seen. I felt so bad for those people, for their families. I tried to imagine what was going through their heads as they were waiting to die. I prayed that God would grant them some feeling of calm. I tried to imagine what I would do if I were in their place, would I jump, would I fight to get out of the building, would I just wait to die? I didn't really cry that day, I was too shocked, too scared. That night I had horrible panic attacks. I had nightmares, very realistic nightmares. I stayed up most of the night thinking that everything was different. The next morning everything was different but not in the way I had thought. I was afraid we would all be too scared to come out of our houses, to function. But being the great nation that we are, we continued to live our lives. We weren't going to let anything get us down. We were different, we were stronger than ever before.