Where Were You?

It was a Tuesday. We were just a few weeks into my senior year of high school. We had a scheduled half day due to teachers' meetings in the afternoon. All of our classes were 20 minutes long that day, so I was in my third period class earlier than normal. It was Newspaper, and we were sitting around not doing much work due to the shortened class times. There were TVs mounted to the wall in the newspaper room, but they were never on. Suddenly, my Western Civilization teacher from junior year, Mr. Whelan, came running into our classroom. He tried to get the TVs to turn on but they didn't work. It was either him or another student who told us that on the radio there was a report of a plane crashing into a building in New York. We didn't think much of it, and then the bell rang so we changed classes. My next class was Chamber & Show Choir. By this time, everyone knew something had happened. My choir teacher, Mr. Varwig, let us go into the empty cafeteria to watch the news on the TVs that were stationed there. That's when we learned that a second plane had hit another building in New York, and those buildings were the World Trade Center towers. For the rest of the day, it was all anybody talked about. My Novel teacher told us, "This day is going to be like the day when JFK was assassinated. People are always going to ask, 'Where were you?'" So she (Ms. Jackson was her name. People always sang the Outkast song to her, much to her chagrin.) made us write down where we were so that we would never forget. School let out and I drove home to eat Kraft mac and cheese and watch the news to find out what else had happened - and so much had - since the last time I'd seen the news in fourth period. I lost the paper that Ms. Jackson made me write, but I still remember.