Where were you on 9/11?
Sep. 11th, 2006 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marathoner452So many others have written far more eloquent tributes than I would be able to manage, so in lieu of the political rant that I know this post would turn into if I let it, I'll put the question to you-where were you and what were you doing?
I went off to college not 3 weeks before 9/11. That day I woke up and went to the college cafeteria for breakfast, then walked down to the post office with one of my friends from high school. Then I went back to the library to catch up on calculus homework. At 8:46 that morning I was probably staring out the library window looking out over the St. Mary's River at the crystal clear blue day, not the kind of day when planes fly into buildings and buildings fall down around us. At 10 am I went upstairs in the library to watch a movie on the French Revolution for history class. Halfway through the movie the professor turns it off, tells us what happened, and a girl whose dad worked in the Pentagon leaves but I don't think much else of it. The movie finished, I went to lunch and contemplated how bagel cutters look a lot like guillotines. I left lunch and walked past the information desk where someone was picking up a bicycle. I saw a sign on the desk about how we could watch news coverage on the events in the campus cinema down the hall, so I decided to find out what was going on. I sat down in the cinema and looked up and it hit me: this is not a movie gone wrong. This is real life. This is happening right now. We will, or should, never see the world in the same way again.
One year later I ran the Run to Remember 5k in Baltimore. I've run it every year since.
I also ran the Marine Corps Marathon in DC on October 27th, 2002, just over one year after.
Some people called us the "9/11 Generation," those of us who came of age around that time. I think they're right. For good or for bad, we were changed by that day.
So whenever my younger friends ask me what it's like to go off to college, I say I really don't know and hopefully they won't have a tragedy like that right after they start school.
So where were you?
~Bethany
I went off to college not 3 weeks before 9/11. That day I woke up and went to the college cafeteria for breakfast, then walked down to the post office with one of my friends from high school. Then I went back to the library to catch up on calculus homework. At 8:46 that morning I was probably staring out the library window looking out over the St. Mary's River at the crystal clear blue day, not the kind of day when planes fly into buildings and buildings fall down around us. At 10 am I went upstairs in the library to watch a movie on the French Revolution for history class. Halfway through the movie the professor turns it off, tells us what happened, and a girl whose dad worked in the Pentagon leaves but I don't think much else of it. The movie finished, I went to lunch and contemplated how bagel cutters look a lot like guillotines. I left lunch and walked past the information desk where someone was picking up a bicycle. I saw a sign on the desk about how we could watch news coverage on the events in the campus cinema down the hall, so I decided to find out what was going on. I sat down in the cinema and looked up and it hit me: this is not a movie gone wrong. This is real life. This is happening right now. We will, or should, never see the world in the same way again.
One year later I ran the Run to Remember 5k in Baltimore. I've run it every year since.
I also ran the Marine Corps Marathon in DC on October 27th, 2002, just over one year after.
Some people called us the "9/11 Generation," those of us who came of age around that time. I think they're right. For good or for bad, we were changed by that day.
So whenever my younger friends ask me what it's like to go off to college, I say I really don't know and hopefully they won't have a tragedy like that right after they start school.
So where were you?
~Bethany
