I live in Ohio. On 9/11 I was only 3 months away from giving birth to my son, and I was on leave because of my pregnancy.

I got up early in the morning and opened my MSIE. Featured story on Yahoo! was about a plane crashing into the WTC. I shrugged it off as some idiot being drunk or high and went back to bed for a couple hours.

When I got up again I went to a forum I usually post at and there were posts urging others to turn it on CNN or whatever station. What I saw next shocked me–America was under attack! CNN played footage of the planes crashing into the towers over and over again.

When my husband got out of bed I showed him what was going on. We just could not believe it.

I got on AIM and began talking with my friends from other countries, letting them know that I was okay, that I lived a good thousand miles away. It seemed that everyone who had a mailing list or listserv was taking headcounts. A friend of mine in Virginia told me that where she lived was on lockdown. My mother, who lives in my home state of Michigan, told me Detroit had pretty much shut down; the Renaissance Center had been evacuated. I also heard that the Sears Tower in Chicago had been evacuated. People were speculating about if and when there would be another attack; there were people saying the West Coast would be next.

I must have watched CNN for three days straight. And it wasn’t so much fear I felt as anger–like how dare they waltz on in here and kill innocent people! Just who do they think they are?

I know who they are. They’re cowards, plain and simple.