9/11

Everyone over a certain age has a 9/11 story. Where they were, what they were doing, how they felt, etc., etc. It is truly a day where I remember everything I did down to the littlest detail.

I was 22, just out of college, and I just started my first job (the job I still have today). I had to work the graveyard shift. Earlier that morning, a co-worker and I were taking a break, so we went outside. It was one of those clear nights where you could see so many stars, it was unbelievable. We saw airplanes in the sky. We were both curious as to where the planes had taken off and where they were landing, so we discussed it, as idle conversation to pass the time.

At the time, I still lived at home, so I was commuting and hour and 20 minutes one way each day to work. I left at 8:00. By the time I reached my halfway point, the hosts of a radio show I was listening to had announced a plane had just hit the World Trade Center towers. My first thought was that how can a plane just hit the World Trade Center... isn't that restricted air space? I had to go to the bank. My mother's mother had left me and my sisters a small sum of money in her will when she passed away many years before. The money was in a form of a savings bond, to mature on a certain date after our 21st birthdays. Mine happened to have matured on September 11, 2001. I went to the bank to cash the bond, and the teller asked me if I heard what happened. I said yes, but I don't remember responding with the same tone of panic as she asked the question.

I made my way to McDonalds. I was hungry, so I wanted a breakfast burrito. Our local MickeyD's had televisions mounted to the wall. This was where I saw what people were talking about for the first time. The horror finally hit me. I wasn't a Christian at the time, so on my drive home, I kept thinking this was Armmegedon. The end of the world as we know it.

I arrived home, only to find my grandmother, who had land beside our house where she and my pap kept a garden, racing through my front yard to ask me if I had heard what happened. I've never seen my grandmother, who was 4' 10" tall, move so fast. Her speed would have rivaled the Road Runner, for she moved so fast. I remember my grammy, pappy and aunt, who had just moved her trailer to the plot of land beside the garden, all gathering in the living room when I came home. My father was still asleep. He had worked 3-11 the previous day, so he was sleeping. I remember leaving him a note to turn on the television, for I thought I would be asleep when he woke up. He woke up before I went to sleep. He got up just in time to see the second tower fall live on television.

During the mass chaos, our local news interrupted with a plane crash in Pennsylvania. A small, unknown town, not unlike mine. I didn't believe it could be related. It just seemed to simple. Turns out, it really was. It was then I realized that things like this don't just happen in major cities. Shenksville is only about 2 hours away from where I live now. Two hours on a road seems like a very short distance in a plane. I realized then this could have happened in my backyard... literally.

I went to bed thinking this is too surreal. The images burned forever into my brain reminded me of the film "Independence Day". I can't watch that film now, especially the part where the aliens attack New York City, without thinking of 9/11. It seems strange. I woke up to find that EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL on television was talking about 9/11. EVERY. SINGLE. CHANNEL. I had never witnessed anything like that. I wanted to turn on mindless television so my brain could decompress, so I didn't have to think about it. That was one day where I couldn't do it.

Nine years later, I think about how much my life has changed since 9/11. I'm not saying my ENTIRE life changed because of it, but after 9/11, circumstances would lead me to where I am now.

Nine years later, I look at airplanes in the sky, and I don't care where they're going of where they started.