The morning of 9/11 was just an ordinary day for me. I was a freshman in high school just barely figuring out who I was. I lived in a small town on the edge of Vermont just a day’s drive from New York City. I woke up that morning like I normally do and went to school not knowing what the day would be like. My first class was a shop class. I was the only girl in it because I wanted to do something different, and I wasn’t like the other girls who swooned over older high school boys.
We started our class in the shop working on moving lumber from one big pile to a smaller pile for our classes own personal use. I was carrying a piece of wood to the pile, just barely listening to the radio which was on high since wood shops are kind of loud. I did not know what the man on the radio was saying because there was a lot of noise but I continued to move the lumber. Not soon after the shop teacher called us into our classroom just down the hall and we filed in and sat down not expecting the next words out of the teacher’s mouth: “The twin towers and the Pentagon have been attacked.”
“What is the ‘twin towers’ and what is the ‘Pentagon’?” I thought to myself. The shop teacher was also the athletic director who had his own office so we walked there and watched on his TV. as the planes crashed into the towers. It never dawned on me what was really happening until I was sitting back home watching and listening to the news about what happened, where it happened and why. The bell rang for gym class and there I sat and was still trying to take in the craziness of it all, I never participated in gym that day, and barely paid any attention in my classes.
I never really cared about the world outside of my own. I was a 15-year-old girl who cared about no one but her family and friends. That day has changed my life making me realize that I needed to get my nose out there and learn about life. That day has changed me for the better making me realize that there is a reality and that bad things can happen no matter what and where you are, It’s like living in a fantasy that never faded and then boom, it fades and the one eyed monster is real and it is attacking your castle and you have to do something about it then just sit there and wonder what you can do, it made realize that I needed to grow up and in growing up I changed who I was as a person not just caring about myself but others as well. As soon as I realized that the airplanes crashing into the twin towers and almost destroying the pentagon was bad, I knew there was a threat out there that threatened not just me but everyone, troops were deployed and lives never truly got back to normal, people lived in fear and wondered if they were going to live another day.
I would like to say that somehow this event changed me completely, made me quit doing certain things or made me change my person but it only changed my perspective on life and how short it can be. It changed how I felt about life and the world and kept me from thinking that everything was only about me and my little world. I read the newspaper and read about what is going on everywhere, not just the United States but Africa and Europe and everywhere else having problems. I like to think that if this had never happened that I would still be oblivious to the world and the events outside of it. But I will never forget or stop praying for all the heroes that died that day for firemen and policemen and for all those troops out there fighting to keep my world safe so that I may have the freedoms I do.