It was my second week of high school as a freshman in a one square mile suburb of Buffalo, NY, and just the day before my teacher was telling the class how there were a lot of people in the world that had issues with America. The next day the first morning bell was about to ring and we were begrudgingly filing into “Global Studies”. The television was on and one of the Trade centers was billowing smoke. Our first instinct was to ask if it was real (most of us being 13/14 years old and having heard the spiel the day before). In our young minds we were hoping it was a lesson, a video to prove a point. Our young minds, unable to comprehend or consider the evil behind it. I remember the sinking feeling when my teacher said it wasn’t a video. It. Was. Real. We all moved in slow motion to our assigned seats, watching minute by minute this “thing” unfolding. The second plane, the collapse, the sadness and realization that so many people were hurt, missing, just gone. The same awful dread from Oklahoma City. Me and my classmates were too young but yet just old enough to get it. The innocent people. My parent’s faces and reactions when I got home. George Bush in his State of the Union address. I got it, but at the very same time, I had no idea. I prayed for everyone and everything that night. Being so young and in the same state, prayingwas the only thing I could do.