Will I ever forget 9/11/1? No WAY.
As a country, as a people, we had always taken pride in the fact that we
had NEVER been faced with an attack (of war) on our own soil. (Pearl Harbor was technically not a part of
the United States when it was attacked
during WW II. Hawaii did not
become a state until 1959 and you birthers can STFU since President Obama was
born in August of 1961.)
My classroom was occupied with students reasonably on task that morning when I heard
a key in my door. I looked up and in walked a student, “Ms. Jane…..turn on the
TV…they flew a plane into the World Trade Center!” He grabbed the remote off my desk and turned
on the television set. I was so shocked that I never asked where he got the key
to my classroom…..but he knew there was a large screen (31 inch) television in my room purchased by my Spanish
3-4 classes.)
In silent shock,
my students and I watched the unfolding horror.
They began to scoot their chairs closer to my desk until they surrounded
my corner of the room. The stunned silence in the classroom was deafening as we
watched the unfolding horror…..the second plane hitting the tower…the collapse
of the building and the utter
devastation….of World Trade…the Pentagon.
The bell rang for class to end, most of the students DID NOT MOVE. I flew down the hall to my friend’s classroom
and yelled at her to call her daughter (who worked at the Pentagon). She looked at me like I was crazy and all I
could say was…”Call her NOW!” Ran back
to my room, pulled my AT&T calling card out of my portfolio and frantically
dialed my brother’s number in suburban Washington. To my surprise and shock, he answered the
phone and all I could say was …”Are you okay?” (I remembered that after the
riots when Martin Luther King was killed…the government had blocked phone
communication in and out of D.C. ) To this day, I don’t remember any other part
of our discussion. I remember my friend
coming to my room to say she had finally talked to a friend of her daughter’s
and her daughter was okay….hadn’t been in the Pentagon that day.
Numbness set in…as
a side effect of the shock. Students
sort of wandered the building looking for a seat near a television they could
watch…the building was eerily silent. Probably for the first time in their teen
age lives, the young people were emotionally shaken….this catastrophe was
bigger than whatever violence they saw/felt/experienced in their neighborhood…..especially
as speculation about the number of
people who died began.
Fifteen years
later…time and War has moved on. At least one student I know of was killed in
battle in Iraq. I went to his visitation….not
his funeral…the school building has been torn down….my friends and I have long
since retired. Many students have gone
to War….a kid from the neighborhood was killed in battle….the young man my
children call their “youngest brother” has been deployed three times and come
home safely. More people have died in War than 9/11 claimed and the empty
spaces in the hearts of a nation still ache.
For some reason….the
idiots who own cable news…think it’s time to rehash that horrible day. I refuse to turn on the television….because I
DO REMEMBER….to the end of my days….I will NOT forget. It is NOT a day to be
celebrated or to be made into unthinking political fodder. The extreme HATE which created a 911, which fomented two wars in the 21st
Century, which continually stirs up religious, racial , social, political and yes even gender
anathema in this world is a direct representation
of pure EVIL rampant in our society and it needs to be stamped out and erased
from the human psyche. My prayer today is for the HATRED to end unequivocally.
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