September 11, 2001 - my story

On September 11, 2001 I was a 13 year old freshman at Morris Knolls High School in New Jersey. I was standing in the Chorus room of my school talking to my friend Tasha waiting for the bell to ring to go to English class. Instead our principal came on the loud speaker. He told us that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center buildings.
I went to my English class and the teacher put on the TV so we could see. The second plane hit. We got word about the Pentagon, and other planes possibly being hijacked. No one learned anything that day. We all just sat glued to the TV.
I will never forget the fear in me that day. I worried about my dad, who was a Currier at the time, and often drove into the city for work. I worried about my mom who was in Newark and so close to the towers she could see it all in front of her. I worried about what all this could mean for our country's future. To this day I still feel a sense of panic when I see a plane that looks like its flying a little too low. When I worked in Newark years later, not far from the airport, I regularly struggled with keeping my cool when I saw a plane coming in for a landing.
My parents were ok, though some of my classmates were not as lucky in their losses. My dad would later go with other firefighters into the city to help and I think it haunted him for a long time after, but that's his story to tell, not mine.
I don't often talk about my experience that day because I was largely unaffected, but it is one of those moments that everyone has in life that they will never forget. Everyone knows where they were when Pearl Harbor happened, when JFK was shot, when the first moon landed. And now my generation will know where they were on September 11, 2001. 

 My sister Sarah and I in front of the twin towers sometime in the late 90s