I was in forth grade. After getting back to the classroom from a short recess, my friends and I immediately realized that something wasn't right. Teachers were moving quickly, back and forth from each others rooms. We were given no direction on what to do next, we weren't even told to be quiet.
Our teacher Mr. Pitera, walked in from the classroom next door. "Hey, everybody," he said, "Lets all sit in the corner and read a story." Something was definitely wrong. It was time for math and instead we were reading Green Eggs and Ham?
We didn't even finish the story when Ms. Lewis, the teacher from the classroom next door, walked in. She walked over to Mr. Pitera, had a whispered conversation with him, then left. Immediately, he put down the book and looked at us, struggling to find the right words to explain whatever needed to be said. I don't remember the words he used.
The date was September 11, 2001.
We were sent home early that day. My mom works at a hospital in Arlington so I left with my best friend and her grandmother. Everyone was so scared. It made me scared. I tried over and over again to call my mom but she wasn't answering.
Our teacher had told us a plane crashed into the Pentagon... my mom worked 15 minutes away from the Pentagon. All I could think about was whether or not she was alright.
Around eight years later, I asked my mom what happened in the hospital that day. She said most people were distraught and calling whoever they could to make sure their loved ones were okay. The whole hospital started to prepare for an large amount of patients, but they hardly got any. "Why?" I asked her, "Did the survivors go to different hospitals?" "No," she said, "There were barely any survivors."
I had never really tried to understand what happened that day. I knew there was an attack and that people died, but I never knew to what extent.
After talking to my mom and hearing her say that "there were barely any survivors," I decided to watch a documentary about the attack. I couldn't believe what I saw. I still can't.
That day I watched the documentary was my 9/11/2001. I cried and mourned the death of the innocent people killed, I just did it eight years later.
Hearing my mom give me a short summary of what happened in the hospital that day changed me. Her version of the story opened my eyes and made me more mature. Learning different points of view of historic events is the only way to really understand what happened. I don't pretend to fully understand 9/11, but the view of a 50-year-old helped me understand so much more that the view of a nine-year-old.
I find it very touching that you recalled this event. I remember it myself, the teachers at my school pulled up the news on the television as all of us watched. It was a very scary thing to see as My parents also were supposed to attend a funeral at the pentagon on that date, the crash occured as they were on the way to building and were stopped by the traffic.
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