11 Years

Eleven years ago I was living in Pennsylvania and was a junior in college. I already have an uncanny ability to remember dates for random things, so the fact that I can remember almost every step that day doesn't surprise me. I remember walking out of the bathroom after showering, and seeing my roommate Nicole watching TV with both hands over her mouth. She was just standing there and I couldn't for the life of me recognize the movie she was watching. She didn't say anything, even when I asked her. She just stood there. I started watching the "movie" and just then the second plane hit the tower. It was that moment that I realized that Nicole had tears in her eyes and that wasn't a movie.

Classes were cancelled, my National Guard friends ran and packed their bags and left campus in droves. We just sat around watching TV. Friends frantically called family in DC and New York. A friend's mom called to tell her a plane just hit near her school in southern PA. Then it came one to the news. It amazes me that it was 11 years ago. It feels like yesterday.

I will never forget this day. Today at school, I realized that none of the kids I work with were alive, most of our school wasn't alive and if they were they were only a year or two old. I tried to explain to them not the evil involved in that day, but the heroes. The people who ran in when everyone else ran out.

We will never forget, and thank you.