Where were you

So tomorrow is September 11.

I don’t think I’ve ever done a “where were you when?” kind of post, so here’s mine.

It was an amazing September day – perfect blue sky, sunshine, low humidity. I had just started (a week previously) a job – my first professional post-college job – as a secretary at a high school in town. I was in charge of attendance, and we had those ScanTron pencil-bubble sheets that the teachers marked.

I had carried the ScanTron sheets back to the scanner (it was temperamental) and was working on that when one of the women in the office came around to tell us that a plane had hit the world trade center. We all exclaimed and commented and thought it was weird. I finished my scanning and went back to my desk.

I don’t actually remember the order of events after that. I do know that we found out pretty quickly that a second building had been hit, and then we knew it wasn’t just an accident. The kids were doing a special reading test all morning and were locked in their classrooms, so there was no great outpouring from the student body – but as they finished their testing word started to spread and the teachers turned on their classroom TVs.

I was still very new at my job and learning the ropes, plus I wasn’t sure how much time I should spend not working, so I sat obediently at my desk and put info into the computer. The administrators in the office had the TV on, and at one point one of them came out and asked if I’d seen any news and told me I should come watch. And I did for awhile.

The thing I remember most is the feeling, though. Because we didn’t really know what was going on . . . for awhile it seemed that every half-hour another target had been hit. Planes were missing. The president was somewhere. Dick Cheney was hiding. We had no idea when it would end and a kind of panicked nervousness overhung all my work that day.

By 11 AM or so, some panicky parents were coming to get their kids. By 12:45, we’d let the kids out early. I think I stayed for the rest of the afternoon, but I’m not sure what I was working on.

You’d think the days after the event would stick out to me, too, but really everyone just went about their daily lives (except for those in NYC, of course). We all went back to work and school and did everything we’d done before. I guess there was news. The internet was still pretty new and relatively small at that point, so no one spent tons of time on it. The other week when Mike was down here we were imagining 9/11 Facebooking and Twittering, and how absolutely insane that would’ve been.

And it’s strange to think about the fact that my life hasn’t changed that much in 8 years, other than my job and the fact I now couldn’t be torn off the internet if something happened. But there are kids who were fourteen then who are 22 now, and they are very different. 9/11 happened in their childhood, before they grew up. Their lives now are completely different. The kids who were doing that reading test are now working, married adults – I think I work in the same building as at least one of them.

So that’s my 9/11 story. I was about to turn 23. My life situation may not have changed much, but I think I have – even much more than I realize.