To my students: 9/11/2001

Ten years ago yesterday I was your age. I was a senior in high school. I attended school in a building identical to this one.

But things were different.

Cell phones were not allowed on campus. Period. That obviously didn’t deter us from carrying them in our book bags, but they were powered off. The one time another student’s made a noise in class, she cried. The phone was taken, and she wasn’t seen for the greater part of a week. She was the talk of the senior class.

Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Real” was the number one song in the country.

Gas was about $1.59 a gallon on a bad day. I could fill up for under $15, usually, and one on notable afternoon of senior year, I filled up for under seventy cents a gallon at Nally’s.

I drove a 1996 black Toyota. My friends and I had tickets to the Aerosmith concert.

The summer before, I’d gotten my first speeding ticket and was due in court the following week. Despite this, life was carefree.

We stood obligingly during the pledge of allegiance every morning, and listened without any real feeling to the National Anthem each Friday night before the football games.

That was about to change.

10 years ago yesterday, I reported to the media center during first period. I was a library aide. Likely, I spent the 55 minutes talking to my two friends who were also aides that period. We rarely had any real work to do. Next, I’d have spent 55 minutes in AP Calculus. I remember very little of the subject, but Ms. Lewis will forever be the best teacher I ever, ever knew. So far, an uneventful day. I walked into my third period class about 9:10. Law with Coach Emery. Upstairs B pod. We had both a quiz and a substitute that day. My memories are fuzzy, but at some point after the bell Kenneth entered the room and announced that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center. Kenneth is the type of person who was never tardy, and would definitely never tell a lie, so immediately people were interested. There was a flurry of activity, people demanded that the TV in the corner be turned on, but the substitute refused. We took a quiz, quickly, and in silence. Finally, the TV was turned on. I was in a seat in the corner furthest from the screen and I was still in denial that I needed glasses. The actual coverage was a blur.

By the time I caught sight of the tragedy for the first time, a third plane had crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The news wasn’t yet showing this, but I know now that it had happened. We watched the burning Twin Towers in awe. I had never seen them in real life, and with a sickening feeling, I knew I never would. We watched in near silence for several minutes, none of us understanding the significance of the scene. Toward the end of the period, the first tower fell. There was a gasp from all of us. We were only 17 or 18 years old, but we knew we had just witnessed death on the TV screen.

The rest of the day passed achingly slowly. I went to American Government, during which our principal made an announcement that a catastrophic event had occurred and that all teachers should turn on the news. Eventually, I went to yearbook, a crowded class in a tiny closet of a room without windows. It was in this sanctuary, with a teacher I’d known for three years, with my best friends, that finally I began to understand that things had changed: Ms. McAfee told us to take out our cell phones. We shared with those who didn’t have them (pretty much anyone who didn’t drive yet) and we all called our parents. Some were crying, some were frantic. It seemed, on that day, that everyone had a connection to New York, had someone flying, somewhere. My own father was on a plane to Texas when the attacks occurred. Once the plane landed safely, the passengers were ordered off and told to vacate the airport immediately, without any details. A woman with a portable TV informed him of the attacks, but she grossly over-exaggerated, leaving him to believe that many, many more targets had been hit for several minutes.

That afternoon, I drove to my cousin’s house in shock. I wasn’t the same person who had driven to school that morning. Only 7 hours had passed, but I’d seen more than I ever wanted to in my lifetime. I had seen buildings collapse, our nation’s airspace closed, people choosing death by jumping to avoid a death by fire. I’d heard of someone named Osama bin Laden, and the term al Qaida, for the first time. There was talk of the country of Afghanistan, which I’d of been lucky to be able to point out correctly on a map.

It was the most educational day of my life.

There was no football game that Friday. There was no MLB, no NFL, no college ball, either. It was as if the world stood still. One night, President Bush made a national address. I was at work, as a hostess in a bar, and the entire restaurant was silent, staring at the small screen (no, definitely not HDTV. And probably not bigger than 24 inches, either). Some of the regulars had tears on their faces when the President was done speaking.

In the days and weeks after 9/11, I flew a flag on my car. Most of my friends did. We donated money to everyone we saw selling anything American. We blasted any song mentioning the word “America” from our car stereos, and sang along with pride. We cheered as the band performed patriotic songs at the football games, and we all stood with conviction for the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. We found a new sense of community within the community we’d already been a part of. We appreciated each other more.

In the days and weeks that followed, America changed. Once planes flew again, security lines at airports were hours long. New rules were put into place. A color-coded system alerted us to be on high alert for another catastrophe. Anthrax began killing people without warning, a deadly white powder mailed to unsuspecting people in random locations. Before September 11, no one ever imagined that we’d have to fear, have to worry. Now, we did nothing but. We began to realize that we were humans, frail, and fallible. We were not indestructible. It was a difficult lesson to learn.

I remember a profound feeling of sadness that I would never understand the same freedoms that my mother and father knew. I knew that my adulthood, to which I was so close, was irrevocably changed before it even happened, but I didn’t even know what had changed and what I’d miss. I was sad for what I’d never experience, and I was scared of another attack that would prevent my life from ever really starting. My dad, one day shortly after 9/11, mentioned to me that the world would never be the same. I was terrified at that comment. I would never experience exactly the life I had spent 18 years expecting to experience.

When planes flew overhead, for months after that day, I remember the urge to duck. Some people I knew did. For months, there was a general fear of anyone and everything. It may have been a terror attack. The eventual announcement that the terrorists had flown from Briscoe Airfield in Lawrenceville—to what, see if Atlanta was a viable target? Practice flying?—didn’t help. Terrorism is aptly named. It brings about terror in those it touches.

It’s difficult to explain how it felt after 9/11. It was one of the happiest times I can ever remember in the sense of pride and joy in what we had and what we knew we’d be again, but it was marked with a weighty sadness at the knowledge of the 3,000 dead. We reveled in the freedom we had while mourning the ignorance that we’d buried on that day, in those moments when the word “terrorism” crept into our vocabularies. It seemed impossible to be so prideful, so full of life, and yet at the same time so saddened ad downtrodden. It was the most contradictory time of my life.

As time passed, the pride was put aside for the demands of real life. 9/11 became a memory. The color coded system of warning became a way of life. People were no longer afraid to fly. Patriotic songs were played less frequently. The Pledge of Allegiance became something of a routine again. Americans became more complacent again. I graduated and moved on to college, where I met new people who I hadn’t shared that day with. It wasn’t in the forefront of our minds every second of every day, and slowly America built its new normal.

While I would never wish another catastrophe on the people of America, I often wish that something could be done to re-elicit that pride, that utter joy at being in America and knowing that we could, and would, overcome anything negative. As the war in Afghanistan stretches into its 11^th year and the general public remains generally apathetic of it and its cause, I realize that this may never happen. We may never come together in the same way again, at least in my lifetime. You, my students, are walking in an identical building to that which I walked. You are attending football games on Friday nights at 7:30. You are standing each morning at 7:10 to say the Pledge of Allegiance. But things are different now. You can use your phones in between classes. You can’t fill up your car for under $35.00. You may never, ever, have a desire to go see Aerosmith in concert. And you’ll hopefully never understand the feeling that your adulthood may be taken away from you before you ever get to live it. For this I am thankful.