I was 10… my birthday was on the 30th of that month, but I don’t remember my birthday that year. I remember the horrific replays, ad nauseam. The towers just kept falling, and falling. It was almost like time was frozen, only for those two separate moments in another dimension; they just kept falling, the explosions replayed to no end, the newscasters keeping us posted on any groundbreaking developments. But before all that, it pretty much happened, the first tower attack, when I was sitting in my 5th grade class at the Tuckahoe school district in Southampton NY.

I don’t remember exactly if we were going over social studies or English work to ourselves, and my teacher, Ms. Mahoney (now Mrs. Greenbaum I think) called over to me that my mom was on the phone on the other end and she was in the lobby of school wanting to pick me up. I was surprised, but a bit happy to leave school. As I walked towards the lobby I saw my mom standing there, and as we walked out of the building, I asked her, (I still remember it, the sky was beautifully blue, maybe a few clouds in the sky, but it was a beautiful pre-fall day) “What happened?” And my mom said something about the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At 10, I didn’t know really what those buildings were, or what they represented. It was only until much later, hours later, my mom and I had the TV on watching every news channel to hear what was presently going on. My mom had picked me up to take her to her office. She was afraid and didn’t know what was happening but she wanted me safe (my sister was visiting friends in Florida). We had a small TV set up in my mom’s office and my mom, a colleague and I sat watching the atrocity.. I don’t recall actually watching the second Tower fall, but I certainly saw it later, a lot. All the different angles imaginable. It was just a lot of replaying, and then reaction shots of people on the street at a distance, clutching stranger’s hands in horror, fingertips to the lips in reaction of what they saw, the screams, the crying, the “Oh my Gods..”. I didn’t know what was happening. Despite my lack of knowledge then, everybody around the world.. not just Manhattan.. didn’t know what was happening either. I think the day after or something, my teacher had a chat with us about what had happened. Of course I remember the announcement Bush made, the war on terror. I was saddened by what happened. I was just, like everybody else, trying to make sense of it all, being a 10 year old. I think we’ll all remember the “BREAKING NEWS” on literally every single news channel.. the anticipation for anything. It’s a day we will all remember. A day we will never forget, a day to tell our family who weren’t there for it. We’re all in this together.. for the good, and the bad.