Ten Years - A Memory

This day ten years ago, it was a Tuesday. I remember, we had just started moving into our new house in Aurora. I went to school, just another day. I was more worried about remembering what bus route I'd take at the end of the day - and my English class. I'd never been very good about keeping up with the homework.

We were working on an in-class essay or a journal or something, and the PA came on (it dinged before the voice came, it scared the crap out of me). It asked for all the teachers to turn the TVs on and go to channel ten, and then it was quiet. I remember that silence, it was so eerie - like we almost expected some kind of practical joke or something. A collective holding of breath as the teacher went through her desk looking for the remote.

The very first image was a tower, and smoke. I didn't know where it was, at first; the only towers I knew about were the ones in Chicago, the Sears Tower and stuff. But there were two, and one was on fire. Reading the newsreel on the bottom, it was New York City. I don't think any of us knew what was happening, I mean at all; we barely knew of anything outside of Chicago aside things like the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben, and even half of us still would've confuse which was in Paris and London.

As stupid as it sounds, my first thought was something along the lines of The devil is out to get me.


Ridiculous, in hindsight. But still kinda true if you think about it.

That eerie silence was still there. All of us 11-year-olds, and the teacher. She was suppressing tears in the back, I think I remember.

I don't remember much else about that day. Just that all the TVs were on in every classroom, and that when I got to history, my fourth hour class probably three literal hours later, they were flashing pictures of Osama all over the screen. I didn't know who he was either, but I just felt scared because everyone else was scared. I felt like we deserved justice because everyone else did.

Eventually I got home, walking through the mud and over discarded boards - we were the only completed house on the street at the time. We had closed on our previous house the day before. If we had waited two days, or even to the next morning, my dad thinks that we would've never been able to close it. Scary.

I walked in the house and my mom was unpacking. We didn't have a TV.

"Did you hear the news?" I asked, a quiet little 11yr-old voice.

My mom sighed a long sigh before she said yes. It was just me and her home at the time, I gave her a hug. It took a long time for us to let go. I think she must've been crying, even though we didn't know anybody directly who was in New York. (Later she told me about when she witnessed the JFK assassination on the TV when she was about 5 - she doesn't remember much about it either, other than she was upset about it interrupting Bozo the Clown she was watching at the time. Surreal what we think when disaster strikes.)

My mom says she remembers how weird it was for it to be so quiet in the sky, no planes or anything. I don't remember the noise, but I remember how clear the sky was. So blue. No clouds, no planes, no nothing.

Not even sound.