10 Years Ago: I Was in Second Grade

         Often people ask me if I was scared. On 9/11. At that point in time, my parents were both serving in the Navy, my mother as a captain, who sometimes went to meetings at the Pentagon. Unfortunately, every time I'm asked, I really have to shrug my shoulders and say, that at age 8, I didn't really know enough to be scared. I feel awful now, remembering my impartiality toward the whole ordeal. I can recite situations and conversations I was in, and heard that day, but I honestly have to say, that my fear and sadness that day were not for my own family, but for the people I saw on the TV, dying before my eyes. At that point in time, my young mind couldn't imagine where my parents were, couldn't picture them trapped inside of a building, as the walls crumbled around them. All I knew was that I could see people jumping out of windows of the World Trade Center on the Channel 5 news. This is an unemotional, recollective piece about conversations and experiences I had that day, with no metaphors to maturity, no “lesson” beneath it all, just the facts I can remember.



         I know I was sitting at my desk. In second grade, we were still grouped together in bunches, our desks fit together to form tables, and I recall another boy,  across from me, whos mother worked at the school, said that a plane had hit a building. We had started class, but the teacher had been called out, before the boy spoke of the attack.  When she came back, she told us that school was canceled. I felt glad, having a acrid distaste for learning of any kind at that point in time, and not having any idea what the issue was about. I was not a selfish child, nor a sadistic one, just ignorant. After that point, my mind draws a blank, but I do remember eventually being set down on the carpet with the rest of the class, discussing terrorism, and who the people had flown the plane into the building were. I was in a class with an Islamic boy, named Ishar. I don't recall anyone treating him any differently. I was sitting on the carpet, and the teacher asked if anyone's parents spent any time at the Pentagon. I raised my hand. I don't remember any pity from the teacher, the only aspect of the rest of the school day that I can remember was another boy, Richard, asking me if I was scared. Not to make fun of me, he just asked if I was or not, to which my proud childish mouth replied that I wasn't. He looked at me, and said that I looked like I was.



         I think I went to a school daycare, since, obviously, neither of my parents could really come pick me up. I recall my sister coming eventually, and trying to explain what was going on while we drove home. My sister and I had a very love-hate relationship then. I now look back and see I was a social idiot at that age, which is probably why she hated me half the time. I don't recall her turning on the radio on the way home.



         The real joke behind all of this is that I can't recall the moment my parents came home. What I do remember is that my sister spent 2 hours on the phone trying to reach my mother, and after finally getting through, the first thing my mother told her was where the life insurance policy was. Soon after, she lost reception, but we knew she was alright, for the moment. My father got home first, since he worked at the Bethesda Medical Center as a radiologist, they had been immediately released once a terrorist threat was obvious. It took him 3 hours to get on the highway. I don't remember him coming home at all, and frankly, I'm afraid to ask him about it, today.



         Nor do I remember anything about my brother, that day. He had just gone to college, to Dartmouth (he was the “smart one” of the children), and was off on a freshman orientation hike for three days. I can only guess as to his horror, upon returning to Dartmouth and discovering that the building where his mother worked had been destroyed by a plane, and that she may have died two days ago.



         That's it. That's all I remember. It might not seem like very much, but to my now mature mind, it's a lot. Someone once said that the human mind remembers best what it would like to forget. Obviously, it doesn't work the other way around. I would like nothing more than to see that day again, in pure clarity, so I could reflect on how much I have grown since then. I didn't magically grow up from this tragedy, nor did I come away from it without any experience what so ever. Because there is one thing I will never forget.





         I know where the life insurance policy is.