Jesse B.

English 11

3rd Hr.

Mr. Hatten

September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001 my life changed forever. It was the day that terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and one other plane that crashed into the ground in Pennsylvania.

I found out between first and second hours from my friend Jamie. I didn’t believe him when he said that terrorists crashed plans into New York and the Pentagon, I didn’t believe him because the airspace around Washington D.C. is restricted. I told him that it isn’t funny to joke about things like that, little did I know that something had really happened.

When I got to second hour the TV was on and I was in shock at the site of the WTC towers and the Pentagon in flames. I didn’t know why they were on fire at first until the news media said that planes had crashed into them in an apparent terrorist attack. It bothered me quite a bit that some of the students in my first hour were laughing and joking about the whole thing, didn’t they think about all of the people who were killed or trapped in the buildings?

I don’t know exactly what time it was when the first tower went down, but I remember thinking: What happened now? I thought that it was an explosion from one of the planes. Little did I know that the tower collapsed.

When they said that the tower had collapsed I could not believe it. What about all of the people that were still in the towers: the police, firemen, people who worked their, visitors and all of the other emergency personnel? Plus all of the people who were on the ground out side of the building trying to help the people out of the building and the people trying to escape.

The next thing that I thought of was my mom because she is in the Army Reserve, and wondering if they had called her up yet. I left class to try to call her. I tried to call her at home, work, and her cell-phone.

When I got back to class (still second hour) the next tower fell, and they said that they were able to evacuate all of the people out of that tower. I found that hard to believe because of the time that they had between the planes hitting the time that the tower fell.

I couldn’t help but to think of what I wanted to happen to the people who planned this attack. I wanted the people who did this to have to go through the same pain and suffering that the people in those buildings and planes had to go through. I wanted instant revenge. I wanted the President to find the people responsible for this and make them feel the pain of the families of the people lost in the attacks.

For the rest of the day we watched the news on T.V, and I kept trying to get a hold of my mom with no success, which worried me quite a bit because she usually always calls back to find out what we needed.

After school I went home and called Steve, my mom’s boyfriend, to find out if he knew where mom was. He said that she had stayed at work and slept there instead of going home.

There were many feelings throughout the day that many different people were feeling. Most of the older kids were looking depressed and like they were in shock from what they had just seen. There were many kids who reacted by laughing and joking about the whole thing which bothered me quite a bit because they were not thinking of all of the people who had just died and all of the people who were going to die in the next few days. They also didn’t think about how in the long run their lives would be affected, some of their brothers might be gone in a few months to go two war or even their friends. Only one of my teachers showed a lot of emotion about the whole thing, he was Mr. Hirsch. He was quite mad about the whole thing. Most of my other teachers looked as though they were in a daze from the whole thing and didn’t know what to think.

All of that night I watched the news to see if they had figured out who had done this. There was no official word from the government, but the word was Osama Bin Ladin. There were no other really big events that day, but one of the other buildings from the WTC collapsed. There were several different projected death tolls and injuries projections. On the news they showed people that were jumping from the towers before they collapsed which was quite disturbing.

I called my dad to see if he had heard about the attacks. When I got a hold of him he said that when he found out they had just finished the front nine of a golf course in Bemidji, that was when the first tower had been hit. He thought that it was just another attack like before and nothing would really happen, but when they finished the second nine they went back to the club house and saw on the T.V that the WTC towers had collapsed and the Pentagon was on fire from planes crashing into them. He told me that he thought that this was all horrible, and that he wouldn’t be surprised that if we found out who was responsible for this that we would use nuclear weapons against them, which scared me a little bit because he previously worked for N.S.A and Military Intelligence so he knows a little about the procedures that the government take when things like this happen and the possible counter attacks that our country would take.

The events on September 11, 2001 have forever changed my life. Who knows how different our lives are going to be because someone had to go and blow up the WTC towers and that Pentagon. Some of our closest friends might not be here tomorrow because of this and this makes me quite angry but also sad at the same time. The day that these events happened will always be in our memories and will never be forgotten.