This will make some feel old, and it will show how young I am.
I remember getting in trouble that morning on the bus for throwing a football around, I'm almost certain the attacks on the towers made the driver forget entirely about my onryness that morning.
I was sitting in class as a 4th grader when suddenly a teacher burst into the room in tears. Not quite sure what to make of it I sat still and listened as intently as I could to see what was happening. All I heard were the words " under attack." Still being so young I render my first thoughts were something to the effect of a columbine shooting, as earlier that week we had covered school shootings and what to do "when the bad guys show up." All three 4th grade classes (a total of about 80 students) got shuffled into a room where a tv was already playing the news, I still remember sitting there hearing the teachers sobbing and a few students sobbing. At the time I had no idea just how much this would impact the world, let alone why anyone would do anything like this to innocent people when America had not done anything to anyone. It took me a solid year or so before I fully grasped these events. I remember my dad picking my up from school and basically sneaking out a back hate at work since he worked as a civil engineer at an Air Force base. I still remember asking if we "would see any cool tanks driving down the road on the way home." Needless to say his talk trying to explain these events to me went right over my head. We lived in a direct air path to an airport, it never dawned on me until about 5 years later that I went outside to play after getting home and never heard a plane every 5-10 minutes as we normally would.
Its still crazy to think it has been that long ago, it feel as if it was only yesterday.