aieeeeee
The good news: I get to take 5 levels of improv classes at IB on scholarship.
The bad news: I can no longer say "Well, I bet I'd be good at improv if I did it more often." I have to get better now, or find a new excuse.
I had no concept of how huge the events of 9/11 were. My understanding unfolded so gradually that it never really struck me. My high school found out over the intercom at like 10:30, long after the second tower fell and the Pentagon had been hit.
Our headmaster described what had happened, and I thought she was describing a major airline failure. It did not occur to me, not for a second, that this was intentional.
My English teacher said "Oh my God" after hearing the words World Trade Center, and that was unusual because we weren't supposed to say that at Holy Name-- "Oh my God" was the equivalent of "shut up" or "stupid".
I don't know how even I could have been this dense, but Ms. Crabbe's "Oh my God" was the only thing that clued me in to the fact that this particular disaster carried any more significance than TWA Flight 800 or the warehouse fire that had killed six firefighters two years earlier.
We had a normal English class, and then the rest of the day was spent either watching the news or trying to hook up TVs in classrooms to watch the news. By the end of the day, I had an idea of who Osama bin Laden was, but my impression was that we were at war with Afghanistan. I knew the word Taliban, but not Al Qaeda.
I called my mom at lunch because other people were calling their moms. My mom seemed bewildered to hear from me, and I don't blame her. What was I going to say, that she didn't need to worry, that I was okay, that the planes had, in fact, missed Holy Name Central Catholic in Worcester, MA?
Some girls went home early, and Jamo and I made fun of them.
My part-time boyfriend called that night. "Heyyyy, what's up?" he said. "Well, you know, I'm kinda down," I said, and meant it. I was starting to develop a very shadowy understanding of the enormity of a terrorist attack on our country.
"Why," he said, genuinely concerned, "what happened?"
In retrospect, the only post-9/11 behavior I recall with any surprise is that of Mr. Burke, my Fundamentalist Christian music teacher. Despite his famed condemnation of other religions (a Wiccan student had a solo taken away from her at the last minute when he found out she wasn't "a believer"), he spoke passionately against the hate crimes, racial profiling, ethnic slurs and other discrimination against American Muslims, Hindus, and people of Middle Eastern descent that was especially prevalent in the fallout.
Mr. Burke made it a point to patronize shops owned by Middle Eastern people, many of whom were experiencing a serious decline in business, and was even fairly open to learning more about Islam, pleased by its parallels to Christianity. Non-Christians of any flavor were still hellbound, of course, but he knew they didn't deserve to be painted with the terrorist brush during the long journey down. This may seem odd, but remembering this attitude among his others (the inextricable link between homosexuality and bestiality; the role of women in the home) gives me a warm feeling.
My feet smell so bad and I just washed them last night.
The bad news: I can no longer say "Well, I bet I'd be good at improv if I did it more often." I have to get better now, or find a new excuse.
I had no concept of how huge the events of 9/11 were. My understanding unfolded so gradually that it never really struck me. My high school found out over the intercom at like 10:30, long after the second tower fell and the Pentagon had been hit.
Our headmaster described what had happened, and I thought she was describing a major airline failure. It did not occur to me, not for a second, that this was intentional.
My English teacher said "Oh my God" after hearing the words World Trade Center, and that was unusual because we weren't supposed to say that at Holy Name-- "Oh my God" was the equivalent of "shut up" or "stupid".
I don't know how even I could have been this dense, but Ms. Crabbe's "Oh my God" was the only thing that clued me in to the fact that this particular disaster carried any more significance than TWA Flight 800 or the warehouse fire that had killed six firefighters two years earlier.
We had a normal English class, and then the rest of the day was spent either watching the news or trying to hook up TVs in classrooms to watch the news. By the end of the day, I had an idea of who Osama bin Laden was, but my impression was that we were at war with Afghanistan. I knew the word Taliban, but not Al Qaeda.
I called my mom at lunch because other people were calling their moms. My mom seemed bewildered to hear from me, and I don't blame her. What was I going to say, that she didn't need to worry, that I was okay, that the planes had, in fact, missed Holy Name Central Catholic in Worcester, MA?
Some girls went home early, and Jamo and I made fun of them.
My part-time boyfriend called that night. "Heyyyy, what's up?" he said. "Well, you know, I'm kinda down," I said, and meant it. I was starting to develop a very shadowy understanding of the enormity of a terrorist attack on our country.
"Why," he said, genuinely concerned, "what happened?"
In retrospect, the only post-9/11 behavior I recall with any surprise is that of Mr. Burke, my Fundamentalist Christian music teacher. Despite his famed condemnation of other religions (a Wiccan student had a solo taken away from her at the last minute when he found out she wasn't "a believer"), he spoke passionately against the hate crimes, racial profiling, ethnic slurs and other discrimination against American Muslims, Hindus, and people of Middle Eastern descent that was especially prevalent in the fallout.
Mr. Burke made it a point to patronize shops owned by Middle Eastern people, many of whom were experiencing a serious decline in business, and was even fairly open to learning more about Islam, pleased by its parallels to Christianity. Non-Christians of any flavor were still hellbound, of course, but he knew they didn't deserve to be painted with the terrorist brush during the long journey down. This may seem odd, but remembering this attitude among his others (the inextricable link between homosexuality and bestiality; the role of women in the home) gives me a warm feeling.
My feet smell so bad and I just washed them last night.