By Matt L.

English 11 4th hour

Mr. Hatten

It was early Tuesday morning, and I was just getting to Anoka-Hennepin Technical College for my welding lecture. Aaron, Kelly, Nate, Alley and I were all talking to our instructor, Dale Szabla. At 8:00, we began our lecture. One of the older students, who got an incomplete in the course last semester, came in about 10 minutes late. About halfway through the class, another instructor from a different program interrupted our class to tell us that the World Trade Towers were dive bombed by airplanes. Dale asked us if anyone else had heard about it, and the student who came in late said he did, but didn’t want to interrupt class. We all joked with him and said that next time a major event like that happened it would be ok to interrupt. We ended class early, and went to the shop to do our lab for the day, when the news came in that the Pentagon had been hit too. We didn't have a radio or a TV in the shop, so Dale would call his wife every so often to find out the latest news. Everybody was in a really bad mood, and just kind of blah, so, it was really hard to do our welds.

Dale told us just to keep on welding and try not to lose concentration on what we were doing. I am in the Post Secondary Enrollment Option (where the state will pay for you to go full or part time to college or tech school classes) and at about 10:30, I decided to get going from the college to the High School. Maybe I would find out some more information on the way. I got to the high school at about 11:15, and went in to the Cafetorium. The TV was on, and the lunch room was strangely quiet. That is when I found out that the towers had collapsed. I also got my first glimpses of an airplane hitting the second building. I was sitting with Aaron A., Mike M., Alex I., Jared E., and Julio C. The bell rang, and everybody piled in to the halls. When I got to fourth hour, I was tardy again, and for once, Mr. Hatten didn't seem too mad about it. We watched the news stations pretty much all hour, and there was the same somber look on everyone’s face. Toward the end of the hour, our school news program came on, and we saw once again that terrible scene of a plane melting into a building, and later the giant clouds of dust, debris, and smoke. It was terrible. The class ended, and all students went toward their lockers, preparing for fifth hour.

All you could hear in the halls were kids talking about what happened, and confirming different rumors, and stories that they had heard, depending on the news station they had watched during the previous class. I went to Geography, and this was the only class that didn't really talk about the torturous event, it seemed. Instead, we worked on our five themes of geography projects, with a TV on in the background. Throughout the rest of the night, I had to call my dad at work with updates on the new information, because they didn't have a radio at work. By the end of the night there were rumors that gas prices were going to go sky high, and my friend Amy went to get gas before they did. She ended up rear ending a Jeep with her Neon, and totaled the car. Luckilly Amy wasn't hurt.