Eleven Years Ago

I can tell you almost every detail of what happened, where I was, and what I was doing eleven years ago exactly on this day.  I couldn't tell you what happened the day before or even a few days after, and the phenomena that I still remember little details blows my mind.  It's a day that I will never forget.

I remember I was living in Virginia Beach.  I was in fifth grade at Thalia Elementary School.  I remember waking up and saying goodbye to my grandparents, as they were going to get on a flight and fly back to California that day.  I remember going to school and it being a pretty normal morning.  

I will never forget knowing something was wrong when we were walking in line to PE class and we passed by a distraught teacher, sobbing and saying "he's in the Pentagon and I can't get a hold of him."  Shortly after that, kids from my class started getting called out of class to go home early and us kids were confused as to why so many kids were getting to go home.  That was when my teacher, with a look of absolute grief on her face, told us that planes had hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York.  I remember being frantic because my grandparents were supposed to be flying around that time.  It was the first thing that crossed my mind.

I remember wanting to go find my sister and make sure she was okay, but then teachers telling me they were only telling the fifth grade classes what had happened, even though we were barely old enough to process what was happening.

I will never forget my history teacher's voice when she pulled down a wall map and started showing us Iraq and talking to us about the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.  She was trying to explain an unexplainable concept of terrorism to us, trying to make sense of a senseless act.  In the middle of her explanations, I was finally called out of class to go home.  

I will never forget sitting in the living room of our apartment, watching images of the planes crashing over and over and over again on TV and the tone of the reporters voices, trying to make sense of what was happening.  I watched on TV as heroes ran into buildings to save lives.  Images of horror-struck onlookers are still burned in my mind.  That was all I watched that day.  I remember not wanting to sleep in my own room and sleeping in my parents room that night because I thought Osama bin Laden was going to come and kill me.  It's a day of horror and terror that I will never forget.

But even through all the horror and confusion and chaos, I will never forget how America, having been knocked to its knees, rose up and united, stronger than ever, and continued to in the days and years after.  I have never been prouder to be an American.