I had worked the late shift at Target (those were the days!) the night before, and got home around midnight. I didn't have to work until 4:30P the next day, so I was sleeping in. I got a phone call from my (ex) girlfriend at ~9:45A and she told me that we were being attacked, and to turn on the television. I flipped it on just in time to watch in horror as the second plane hit the World Trade Center. I immediately called my Father and asked him what the hell was happening, and he said something to me that I had never heard him say, he said he didn't know what was going on and he was scared. If you know my Dad, as many of you do, you know how frightening that can be. I was terrified.
I continued to watch in horror as the news broke into the crash at the Pentagon, and then in Pennsylvania, and then back to New York and the World Trade Center as the towers fell from the sky. I watched as a stunned and ill-prepared FAA pulled every plane from the sky in a desperate attempt to try and control the situation. I remember as they were talking about how almost all of the planes were now grounded, I heard the sound of an airplane outside. But it wasn't a normal airplane engine, no; I remembered that sound from my years in Florida next to the Air Force Base. It was the sound of a jet. I ran outside to see, not one jet, but six F-15's blaze through the open sky. Not something usually seen in Columbus. After they had passed, I stood there dumbfounded at the sound... of nothingness. There was nothing. No traffic, no air planes, no helicopters, nothing. I couldn't believe it. Something that hadn't happened in a CENTURY and probably will never happen again, there was no air traffic.
That is when the gravity of the entire situation sunk in. I stood there in the quiet, and it was the loudest sound of horror I had ever heard.