Yesterday, seven years ago.
A large percentage of Earth's population remembers exactly what they were doing yesterday, seven years ago.
Here's what I was doing:
We lived in Alaska at the time, which is four hours behind New York City. The towers had already been hit by the time everyone was waking up for work. The radio came on in my parents' room for their alarm, there was only one radio station in Kodiak, and it was on NPR (National Public Radio) that day. It took my mom a minute to figure out what was going on; once she did however, she reached over a hit my dad saying "Wake up, NOW!" she has never hit him before, or since, to wake him up, but that day would prove to be very different.
I woke up to my alarm that morning, I use the "Beep, beep, beep" setting so didn't hear the news. I walked downstairs and my parents were eating breakfast, with the radio on. This was not the norm, but it wasn't totally weird; that is, until I began to process what the radio was saying. I quickly ate breakfast, my parents giving me a bit of a briefing; that day there would likly be security at our school and stuff. I then took off with my dad to go to school, he wanted to get to work early.
Once most people in my class were at school, we sat down the rug in a lose circle. I was in 4th grade at the time, it the first and only day that year that we did that. We all began to talk; the teacher told us what she knew, we talked about what kind of people might do this (the words "Muslim" or "Afghanis" never came up, it was always just "terrorist") and why, what it meant for the country, what it meant to us. This was the school that 90% of the military kids went to, so it affected us quite a bit, maybe more then the "normal" kids.
One of the kids in our class, his grandfather worked in the the twin towers. When he went to school, his family had no idea what had happened to him. Later, and call came into the classroom that his grandfather was alive. He had broken his leg on his way out but would heal just fine.
We didn't get a lot accomplished that day academically. None of us went outside for morning recess either, we just hung out inside playing games and such. When lunch came around, we all voted that we wanted to stick together that day, and instead of splitting off like we normally did, most everyone in the class sat at one table. We were all worried about friends we had from previous duty assignments. What if their parents had to respond? News had come in that personal tending to the scene had been killed or severely injured.
Once again, we didn't go out to recess, we just hung around in the classroom and played games. This time, the teacher never called and end to recess and we spent the rest of the day like that. Some kids were picked up early, sometimes parents just came to see how they were doing. We had MilPo in the halls all day too: Military Police.
Most kids were picked up by their parents that day instead of taking the bus home.
That afternoon was low key at my house, dad came home late, lots of meetings and stuff.
Stuff went back to normal over the next week, but we still all were talking about it.
Here's what I was doing:
We lived in Alaska at the time, which is four hours behind New York City. The towers had already been hit by the time everyone was waking up for work. The radio came on in my parents' room for their alarm, there was only one radio station in Kodiak, and it was on NPR (National Public Radio) that day. It took my mom a minute to figure out what was going on; once she did however, she reached over a hit my dad saying "Wake up, NOW!" she has never hit him before, or since, to wake him up, but that day would prove to be very different.
I woke up to my alarm that morning, I use the "Beep, beep, beep" setting so didn't hear the news. I walked downstairs and my parents were eating breakfast, with the radio on. This was not the norm, but it wasn't totally weird; that is, until I began to process what the radio was saying. I quickly ate breakfast, my parents giving me a bit of a briefing; that day there would likly be security at our school and stuff. I then took off with my dad to go to school, he wanted to get to work early.
Once most people in my class were at school, we sat down the rug in a lose circle. I was in 4th grade at the time, it the first and only day that year that we did that. We all began to talk; the teacher told us what she knew, we talked about what kind of people might do this (the words "Muslim" or "Afghanis" never came up, it was always just "terrorist") and why, what it meant for the country, what it meant to us. This was the school that 90% of the military kids went to, so it affected us quite a bit, maybe more then the "normal" kids.
One of the kids in our class, his grandfather worked in the the twin towers. When he went to school, his family had no idea what had happened to him. Later, and call came into the classroom that his grandfather was alive. He had broken his leg on his way out but would heal just fine.
We didn't get a lot accomplished that day academically. None of us went outside for morning recess either, we just hung out inside playing games and such. When lunch came around, we all voted that we wanted to stick together that day, and instead of splitting off like we normally did, most everyone in the class sat at one table. We were all worried about friends we had from previous duty assignments. What if their parents had to respond? News had come in that personal tending to the scene had been killed or severely injured.
Once again, we didn't go out to recess, we just hung around in the classroom and played games. This time, the teacher never called and end to recess and we spent the rest of the day like that. Some kids were picked up early, sometimes parents just came to see how they were doing. We had MilPo in the halls all day too: Military Police.
Most kids were picked up by their parents that day instead of taking the bus home.
That afternoon was low key at my house, dad came home late, lots of meetings and stuff.
Stuff went back to normal over the next week, but we still all were talking about it.