IT WASN'T ME, THE VOICES TOLD ME TO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was just watching some of the rebroadcasting of the news coverage from 9/11, from President Bush's speech in the school in Florida till just after the fall of the first WTC at 9:59. It's hard to watch, looking at the buildings that don't exist anymore, realizing they were real, that peope were actually in there, trapped and needing rescue, dying. That the planes and the buildings were full of people just doing normal things thinking it was any old normal day. And it's funny, because even though I wasn't there, in fact I didn't even see much of the broadcast when it happened, but it still brings back so many memories.

Like the fact that I was in IPA (Independent Practice Assignments, aka Study Hall) with Mrs. Lewis in the corner room sitting on the left side facing the door when Mrs. Bledsoe came in and whispered something to Mrs. Lewis, and watching her face fall as she realized what was going on and what she had to tell us. All the middle school and high school kids had an emergency chapel prayer service thing (none of the elementary students got told as the school decided that should be the parent's decision/job). We stayed in there for 2 or 3 hrs.

There was so much conflicting information coming so fast. Everyone seems to forget that fact. Like, nobody ever seemed to know exactly what was going on, we were getting three sides to every story. It was this got hit, no, that got hit by this, or was it that? It was an accident, somehow the pilots got off track and couldn't correct it. Wait, the other tower just got hit? By a helicopter or another plane? So it was definately a terrorist attack? How many more planes? What happened at the Pentagon? Are they evacuating everything? What about the President? Are the schools in danger? Am I in danger? Are there any more hijacked planes? And now a piece of the first has blown-up and fallen off, no, the whole top fell into the other tower, actually it's collapsed on top of itself? There were 40+ people on each plane, unless that other one was smaller or... and 100s of people were still trapped in the Towers, but the death toll is in the 1000s...

That's what was scary, not knowing or being able to fully understand what was happening. I was in 7th grade, 13 years old, and I still remember everything. I knew from the look on Mrs. Lewis' face and how she was addressing the whole class that either one of the teachers or staff or something had died, or there was a serious threat somewhere affecting a lot of people. I just knew that even as I was living it, this event, this disaster, would go into the history books.

I'd been to NYC the previous April, when I was 12. I walked the streets around the Towers, when just about everywhere you could look up and see them. I stood in the ground floor of the building, holding my dad's hand so as not to get lost in the business. When we flew home, as we were exiting the plane, the cockpit was open and visible. The pilots let me sit down in the seat and hold the wheel, pointing out buttons and dials and telling me what they meant or did while my mom took a picture. My kids won't be able to do that, at least not in the near future. I went back, the March I was 14 with my youth orchestra to perform at Carnegie Hall, and we visited Ground Zero. I couldn't recognize anything. It was so... dismal. I don't know how else to say it. It was depressing and gray, so dirty and unmaneagable, so heavy that I felt like I was suffocating. I'm going again, this March-April with my youth orchestra to do the Carnegie Hall thing again, and I'm just wondering if we'll stop by Ground Zero as well, if it's still the same or if it's changed.

It's weird, how our memories get us that way. I mean even now, 5 years later, how much do we know about everything that went on that day? Sadly, not much. Not enough. I guess all we can really do is remember our experiences, whether from inside or out, and pray for the victims, their families, the soldiers, news reporters, and medical workers still overseas, our President and country leaders, and America as a whole.

And now that I've had my trip down memory lane and had this chance to muse over it all, what about you? Where were you???