Some things about that day- memories of 9/11

Some things about that day…
The carpet was worn.  It was the same one that had been on the floor since I was a student at Ramapo High School.  The desks were newer, a blend of metal and hard plastic, but the one at the front, that I was prepared to sit at, on and off, for the next several hours, was wooden and old.  There were scratch marks on it, pencil lines and designs, even initials carved here and there from who I presume was an ambitious substitute like myself, or a bored student.  The doors were the same.  My boyfriend used to break pencils in the doorknob lock of this one, forcing Mrs. Solomon, his AP Calc teacher, to call the janitor to come down and remove the doors from their frames so that class could begin (usually at least ten minutes late).  I plopped my bag, withdrawing the lesson of the day to hand out to the students.

A girl rushed in, her backpack smacking her back in rhythm with her steps.  She had long hair, as teenage girls do, and was a little out of breath.  "Can we turn on the tv?" she asked excitedly.

I looked at her and smiled, mildly amused.  "I know I'm a substitute, but I can't just let you guys watch tv," I responded patiently.

"No- it's the Twin Towers," she paused for effect.  "One of the towers just exploded!"

I didn't wait for anything more.  At the time, I thought one of my close friends was working on a lower floor (I didn't know until hours later that she had changed her shift from Tuesdays to Thursdays).  I rooted around in the desk, my fingers sifting through loose leaf paper and wayward staples.  Grabbing the plastic remote control, I pointed it at the heavy television in the corner of the room, while students shuffled past me, talking in frantic tones.  Their history teacher had been showing a clip on CNN when the first tower was hit, and word has spread through the building quickly.

There was a click of power, and the screen slowly burned from black to white to images as I hit the buttons to find CNN.  There was blue in the corners, that bright blue that only happens in New York in the fall, the kind that makes you want to traipse through Central Park, or hike around Washington Square Park and listen to guitar players and throw coins in the fountain.

But this blue was just a frame.  It wasn't inviting, but rather was in the process of being blocked out, because front and center were the Towers.  The one on the right had black smoke fuming out of it, as though some angry dragon had opened its mouth.  The talking in the room grew louder.  Across the bottom of the screen scrawled the closed caption note that a plane had struck one of the towers.  I hit the volume up button, and the hyper speech of a commentator rose above the din of teenage gossip.

Within seconds, we saw an explosion.  I looked at the clock above the door.  It read 9:03 AM.  The newscaster seemed flustered.  The kids started asking to run down the hall to the pay phone, wanting to call to check on their parents in the city.  I sat down on the desk, the clicker in my hand, and tried to speak.  Words were failing me, and I nodded my head.

We still thought it was just a fire.  We believed, as a generation that grew up after Vietnam, after WWI and WWII, that attacks were things that happened to other countries.  I went into autopilot, handed out the dittos left by the regular teacher, something about Algebra I've long since forgotten.  I walked to the doorway, conversing briefly with the teacher who, at one point, had to remove her door due to pencil graphite breaking the locks.  She didn't know who I was dating.

I walked back to the desk, and was leaning against it when the first tower collapsed in a plume of smoke, obscuring our view of the blue sky completely.  There was a collective gasp in the room, followed quickly by frantic gesturing and panicked speech.

I pulled out my rudimentary cell phone, calling my mother to make sure she knew what was happening.  A few minutes later, a call came in from my sister, checking that I was not in the city that day.  She was sitting in a dorm in North Hampton, Massachussetts.  She was safe.  I called my boyfriend's roommate (his didn't have a phone), and left a message that the towers were on fire, that one had collapsed, to have Jeff call me.  I still have that number memorized.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, another plane went down.  I can remember turning to the class, and saying, quite certain, "In a few hours, we're going to find out there were heroes on that plane that prevented a tragedy."  I could feel my voice getting hoarse as I said it, that throaty feeling when you are trying not to cry, when you have to get the words out.

The bell rang, the classes switched.  The tv stayed on as I left, knowing I had a period free to run home.  I took the hallway past the poles we once pretended led to the "Bat Cave" in a French video.   I thought of my friends, and prayed they were safe.  My high heels tapped the floor outside the child development room and the culinary arts room, and stopped outside the theatre, where the TV sat over the payphone.  The line to use it ran all the way down the hall, past the glassed in courtyard, to the nurse's office by the front entrance.  It would grow larger over the next hour.

One of the students I knew, in tears, asked if she could use my phone to try to call her dad.  I handed it over.  She got a busy signal.  Another one saw this transpire, and asked if she could try her parents.  I obliged.  We stood there, me handing my phone off to student after student, all of us watching the screen and the smoke and the teens ducking into the glassed in booth to stab at the silver buttons with trembling fingers.

The second tower fell.  Someone in the hallway screamed.  I grabbed my phone, apologizing as I ran towards the exit.  I pushed open the heavy metal doors, my pupils constricting as my eyes adjusted to the bright lights of outside.  There were goosebumps on my arms despite the warm autumn air.  I dialed numbers on my phone with my left hand as I hit the keyless entry with my right, trying in vain to reach my friends.  All cell service seemed to be busy.

At home, I can remember rushing up the stairs, sitting down at the computer that looked out at Cedar Hill Ave., and turning on AOL.  There were images that would become way too familiar over the next few days filling the screen.  I opened the AOL Instant Messenger, and for the next twenty minutes, proceeded to message every person whose screen name I knew.  I emailed others, and was grateful for a flurry of replies.  The phones may not work, but the internet is functioning as usual, I thought.

I grabbed a snack bar as I rushed out of the house back to Ramapo, breaking some speed records to ensure that I would arrive before my next class started.  By now, the Pentagon had been hit.  The principal came around, calling Mrs. Solomon and myself out into the hallway, explaining that the school's official stance was that all televisions should be turned off, but that if students needed to leave, they could go to the office and sign themselves out.  Otherwise, to try to teach, and try to maintain normalcy.  We both looked at him as though he had three heads.

As soon as he was out of earshot, I whispered, "Is he serious?!"

She shook her head. "I don't care what he says.  I've been here for 25 years, and I'm not turning off a historical event."  We agreed that the televisions stayed on, and she said I could blame her if anyone said anything.  They didn't.

I don't remember much about the rest of the day.  My boyfriend woke up to my IM message: "Twin towers hit by planes.  Pentagon hit.  NYC seems to be under attack.  Call me.  I love you."  I remember sitting in front of the television with my mom, on the old white couch with the different colored threads running through it, while we watched the newscasters try to make sense of the mess.  I remember parking at "S Hill" in Ridgewood, and sitting on the rock wall with the other suburbanites, quietly gazing east towards the city.   I remember days later, standing in a line on my front porch with high school friends as we participated in the nationwide candlelight vigil, my red hair a stark contrast to the blue sweatshirt I wore to keep out the cold night air.  I remember climbing up to the top of a mountain in North Haledon with Jeff, staring out at the mutilated skyline and the smoke that still rose from the ashes.

I remember crying every time I read the newspaper, heard another story, scanned the names of the missing in the church bulletin.  I found out one friend had lost her brother-in-law, who ran to the roof while on the phone with his mom, before the line went out, and she watched in horror as his building collapsed.  I discovered a high school friend, who I had just seen the week before, had escaped the second tower, fleeing from the bathroom with a coworker, despite orders to stay put, down 82 flights of stairs minutes before the building shattered.  I remember the destruction, and also the pride in the compassion of humanity in the face of tragedy.  And I remember the world around me trying to return to "normal"- Mike Piazza hitting a home run, and weeks later, the Yankees blowing a World Series.

I remember, now, years later, that I'm lucky.  I was 25 miles from the tragedy, close enough to see it, close enough to smell the burning sky, but far enough away to be "safe".  I remembered it then, and I remember now, how precious each moment is. 13 years, and that lesson still hits close to home.

I use this as a writing prompt for my students, and I've had this nagging feeling I was going to eventually be overwhelmed by the need to use it myself.  So here it is, in honor 9/11/01, my memories of that day.