-- I wrote this on September 9, 2011 - two days before the 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I liked it enough to post here albeit, a few days late. --
I was a Junior in college at the University of Michigan. I was living in a house with five other girls at 917 State St. in Ann Arbor. Classes had just started the week before - it was Tuesday and my housemate (Dayna) and I had our first class that day at 10am, a Communications lecture. We learned early Freshman year not to schedule a class before 10am...noon if you can help it. We also tried to avoid Mondays and Fridays.
It was close to 9:00-ish am and naturally, I was still sleeping. Our house sat about 10 feet away from our neighbors' house and my bedroom window faced one of my neighbor's (Matt) bedroom windows. We would often talk through our windows as it was easier than by phone or walking 10 feet to the other's house. If it were warm enough outside, I would often keep my window open, blinds drawn to keep Matt from seeing me in my skivvies. So I'm sleeping...and I hear, "Aubrey! Aubrey, wake up! Aubrey, you need to wake up and turn on your TV!" I sluggishly come to and realize it's Matt yelling at me, via window. I opened my blinds and said, "What's going on?!" He said, "You need to turn on your TV, just turn it on!" He wouldn't tell me what was going on. I knew something outrageous must be happening if he was waking me, of all people, up at 9:00am and I knew he was serious about whatever it was. I secretly thanked myself for at least sleeping in a T-shirt as I realized Matt probably just saw me in my underwear. Later I realized, he probably couldn't have cared less about my underwear at the time. So I turned on the television in my bedroom.
NBC was my news channel of choice then. Smoke was billowing out of one of the World Trade Center buildings. I was kind of confused and shocked and ... tired. "How'd that happen, why is it on fire? ....Oh, a plane flew into it? How could that have happened? Matt, what's going on?!" I then thought of my roommates, specifically the ones who were from the NY/NJ area. "They might have family or friends working in the city, I should wake them up." I woke Dayna up and she moves about as fast as I do after death sleeping, which is what we did back then. I think she called a few people and thankfully everyone was okay. We sat on the edge of my bed, in my room and watched, and watched, and watched...as a second airplane flew in from the side of the screen and I remember saying, "There's another plane!" Duh. "It's going to hit it. Oh my God, it's going to it!" And then it did. Dayna and I had just watched dozens of people get killed on live television.
---
Immediately, it became certain that these were deliberate attacks and fear set in. My first thought took me back to a conversation I had with my mom when I was...16?
"Mom, all the 'big' stuff happened when you were younger. You had Vietnam, Civil Rights Movement, Kennedy Assassination...nothing 'big' is ever going to happen for my generation. It's so boring."
I called my mom after the second plane hit and stupidly asked her if she knew what was going on. "Yes," she said. And then she referenced that old conversation...
"Remember when you asked me why nothing 'big' ever happens?" I shamefully hung my head. This was our "big". Since, I've regretted saying anything like that. I guess I didn't know how great it was to be so boring.
---
Reports and news and accounts of the tragedy and turmoil that was going on in our forever-changed world flooded in as Dayna and I both decided not to shower and head to class. Remember this was before Facebook and other social media. My cell phone, which I had just gotten that fall, still had a pea-green screen. For some reason, we were continuing on with life as usual even though it was as if the world had stopped. While walking to class, there was a mass exodus of students walking away from campus and we had overheard all classes had been cancelled for that day. There's something inside of you that elates when you hear, "Classes have been cancelled," despite the reason. Dayna and I exchanged jubilous outbursts which were snuffed out quickly by another student who verbally lashed us for being happy about cancelled classes. "Hundreds of people are dying! Don't you know?!" She was very upset at the circumstances that had led to the cancelled classes whereas Dayna and I hadn't considered the reasons, even though we knew them fully well. The student kept walking and Dayna and I just turned around to schlep back to the house, half-embarrassed, half-still excited about not having to go to class that day.
That's where my "Where Were You?" memory ends. Not all that poignant of a story but I remember every minute like it was yesterday, not 10 years ago. Ask me about anything else that happened 10 years ago and I will probably relay a fuzzy recollection with a bit of bullshit filler for the details I can't recall.
The fact that it's been 10 years hasn't changed much. It hasn't made it any less fresh. People still question how it happened, it was an inside job, it wasn't Bin Laden, Santa Claus did it, etc. None of the conspiracy theorists unfortunately can't say that it didn't happen. Whether it was a terrorist attack or the Man in the Moon, it happened and over 3,000 people were murdered that day - their families' and friends' lives changed forever in the most horrible of fashions.
It pisses me off a little bit that it takes something like this to unify people. It takes a tragedy to realize that we all have a commonality, being human and being alive...and are mortal. I'm not sure it's worth it.
The fingers of the 9/11 devastation have reached into political, religious, and conspiracy theorist arenas. Its effects have trickled into nearly every aspect of our infrastructure, how we travel, our security, what to put in our suitcases. I've heard people damn 9/11 because it's made them late for flights due to heightened, lengthy security measures. I damn 9/11 because it took innocent lives. And suddenly I've become that random student, rebuking Dayna and me on our way to class that day. "Don't you know people have died?"
In the end, it's not political, it's not a conspiracy, it's not "a sign". It's tragic. And we'll never forget, as if we could anyway.
To this day, I feel overwhelmingly guilty about our reaction to classes being cancelled. For some reason, I don't think we understood the gravity of the situation just a few short hours after the attack happened. Did it not seem real? Were we too far removed from it? Had we not realized that the world had stopped? I remember how we struggled to decide whether we should go to class, but realizing that we already had too many absences, we forced ourselves to go. The fact that we were worried about being marked absent, in and of itself, shows that it hadn't really sunk in. It's odd because I remember that morning perfectly, but I don't remember anything after we got back from our short walk towards campus. I can only assume you and I were glued to the tv all day, but it's a blur. What I do remember very clearly, however, is sitting on your bed on the one year anniversary, watching the names of the victims being read aloud. That day we skipped class and we didn’t give it a second thought. The fact that we could be expected to sit through class when something so historic and important was taking place seemed ridiculous. 9/11 obviously changed the way that we all live our lives, but it changed so much more than that. It changed the way we think, it changed the way we react, and I think it gave us all a better understanding of what's really important in life.
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