Sunday, September 11, 2011

Where Were You?

People always seem to know exactly where they were and what they were doing when tragedy strikes.  Like I remember I was in Mr. Nichols' 8th grade class when the Challenger exploded and I was in the dollar store downtown when I heard the news report about the Columbia breaking up on re-entry.

This is what I wrote in my journal/diary on September 11, 2001... [things in parentheses are my added notes now for clarification]

"I went into the office at 1st recess and Deb [the secretary] had the radio on.  I thought it was too nice of a day to have a tornado watch or something [normally she only had the radio on for weather reports on possible bad weather days] I must have looked weird because Deb said that 2 hijaked jets crashed into the World Trade Center Towers in New York City!  While we were talking, one of the towers collapsed!  By this time, my class was back.  I didn't tell them anything about it [they were in Kindergarten and I figured I'd let their parents tell them how they wanted].  By the end of the school day, both towers had collapsed and another jet crashed into the Pentagon!  The picnic at Ferris with Dan's college was cancelled.  The gas prices jumped from $1.56 when I went to work to $1.89 when I got home to $1.99 when Dan got home!  256 people died  in the 4 airliners that were hijaked."

Deb's daughter had called her when the first plane crashed into the tower, so she had turned on the radio.  I pulled a TV into my room when the kids were at lunch so I could watch some of the news reports to get a better understanding of what was going on.   The first thing I did when I got home was call my mom.  I remember just sitting staring at the TV and wondering how in the world someone would do that. 

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