I didn’t understand

Date Submitted: 09/10/2011
Author Info: Soon-Bok (Saint Louis, MO - USA) 
Occupation: Student
Lived in NY on 9.11.01?: No
Knew someone who perished?: No

I was in my 1st grade classroom, learning about the alphabet. We were all sitting on the floor, and had a perfect view of outside the door. The assistant principal came and called our teacher out of the room, and whispered something to her. Our teacher started crying. Kids began to get pulled out of class one by one by their parents. The tornado sirens were sounded (Also symbolic where I live of going to war, not just having a tornado). On the ride home, I asked my dad, “What happened? Why aren’t we listening to Radio Disney?”; he had on talk radio instead. He said “A plane, like the one we take to Disney World, crashed into two big buildings in New York.”. My mental image of this, being that I was a first grader, was a plane flying into a building, with a few shaken up passengers and a gaping hole in the building as a result- I didn’t know it killed people. When we got home, I was instructed to sit under the table for the rest of the day- I wasn’t allowed to play with toys or read books. I was just simply told to sit under the table. I saw the TV across the room on, and I watched the footage of the planes crashing into the towers earlier that day. I didn’t understand.

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