Do You Remember?

author's note: This is not meant to antagonize anyone or in offense. This is my memory of where I was, what I was doing, and how it happened for me. It is a re-telling, nothing more and nothing less.

I realize that this would perhaps be more appropriate closer to Sept 11, but it's hard to judge exactly when each submission will come out. And so I'm submitting it now, and it will be here when Sept 11 is too.

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I was sitting in my U.S. History class, waiting for it to start. There was something going on with the professor’s at the head of the room, they were talking to each other and running in and out of the classroom. Although this wasn’t a particularly large class, I didn’t know anyone in it and so I just sat there, looking around at the cheerful talking people around me and wishing that I had someone to talk to. But I was shy, and there wasn’t anyone sitting by me that was also alone. So I just watched as the Professors wheeled in some kind of screen and put it up onto the projector.

It looked like some kind of news report, only strange... smoke was billowing in the background and it looked like New York or something... then the picture flashed to what looked like the Pentagon, also burning...

Was this some kind of strange movie? Like “Independence Day”? Or an old movie, I tried to remember if there was any time that the Pentagon had been burning...

“On today, September 11, 2001, two planes have been flown into the Twin Towers in New York City, another one has hit the Pentagon...” The newswoman’s voice was slowly trickling throughout the room as my numb brain tried to figure out why she was saying today’s date.

The entire room slowly got very, very quiet as it flashed back to the Twin Towers, where it was still smoking. It was as though my entire head was buzzing, I couldn’t hear anything... the words coming out of the TV seemed somehow muted. It wasn’t that the room was loud, there was absolutely no noise coming from anyone anymore... we’d all realized that it wasn’t a movie, it wasn’t part of the history lesson.

It was part of today’s history, our generation’s history... it was happening right now, in front of us, and we were watching it live. Every thing happening at this second. Small screens in the corner showed the actual plane crashing into the second tower, described the attacks on both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. We were numb, muted, completely caught in a frozen moment of horror that seemed both surreal and dangerous.

Part of me was completely numb, while the back part of my mind was going a mile a minute. Attacks... attacks on U.S. soil... Pearl Harbor... Day of Infamy... war... war... the Pentagon... the draft?... death... my grandfather - would he be in Washington today? My Aunt was due home from Boston this morning, what flight? What flight? Why couldn’t I remember the flight? Why had I been so arrogant as to think that the flight number wouldn’t matter? Suddenly it all mattered, it all mattered quite a lot.

I was shaking in my seat, watching as the firefighters tried to put out the fires at the Pentagon, as the screen went back to the World Trade Center and they described the efforts of the men inside, trying to get everyone out. Numbly I stared at the buildings, looking at the plane that was lodged into it and wondering how anyone in the floors above it was possibly going to make it out of the building alive...

It was a point that was moot as suddenly screams erupted out of the TV, a collective scream that the classroom echoed as the tower began to crumble. It was like watching a pile of dirt or sand that had been built up too high suddenly start to fall... it collapsed where the plane was and slowly just fell down from there, the upper most part of the building staying the most intact... Horrifyingly slow, almost as though we might be able to reach out our hands and stop it... that teeny tiny building on the screen that was falling... falling...

The TV showed every heart-wrenching second of it as the woman on the screen went silent, screams from all sides echoed through the TV... hers? Maybe. Definitely the people around her... Us? We were silent again. Mute in horror, not knowing what to do, having the sudden urge, the need, to be there, to help to do something, ANYTHING...

And suddenly I realized what it meant. That simple falling building, that silly looking toy building that was so small on the screen. That building was full of people, people who were trying to get out, people who were trying to get others out... there were so many people in that building. It wasn’t just the tragedy of the people that had been on the plane, but inside that small building that I had wanted to keep from falling, much as a child wants to keep its sand castle from being swept away, were hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives.

A sob ripped through the room as one girl suddenly ran out, and then there were tears pouring from my eyes as I wondered how many people I had just watched die. Watched die in front of me, and irrationally I felt as though I should have been able to help them... if I had just been able to do something then everything would have been different...

We watched. For the whole hour of our class we watched, watched every horrifying detail, heard every description, we were glued to it. At the end of the hour there was nothing more. Such a short time span... and it was packed with so much.

I wandered across the campus, back to my room where I turned on my own TV and kept watching. My roommate came back, all she’d heard was rumors about it... I called my boyfriend and tried to talk to him, he knew even less than my roommate had. I felt so alone then... I had been too far away to help, and yet too close...

One hour. Just one short hour on 9/11.

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I wrote this poem on September 11, 2002

A Moment Of Silence

One moment of silence
above the flames and the screams
the sobbing of millions
the dying of dreams

one moment of silence
as the plane flew overhead
to remember the crash
the wounded, the dead.

one moment of silence
as heros rushed up
destined to go down
they still could not stop.

one moment of silence
a plane ended their calls
they gave their lives
so only two towers would fall.

a moment of silence
on a day of remembrance.