(Listening to : “Bless His Soul” by The Jacksons)
Hey Y’all,
As we all know, September 11, 2012, marks the eleventh anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. I can scarcely believe that so much time has passed, but indeed it has.
It just does not seem at all like it was that long ago to me because just like most everyone else, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first heard the news of the attacks.
And I want to be serious for a moment, and share my memories with all of my readers.
In order to remember it, I have to go back. Back to Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Back in 2001, I was a fifteen-year-old sophomore in high school in Texas, with classes being in for only a few weeks at best. Not even a full month into the term. I hadn’t even worn all of my new clothes yet.
My day began at 6 a.m., with my father waking me up as he had done since I was in the 6th grade. I got up that early to make sure I got to school for 7 am. ( I liked to dawdle on the internet in the library and look after MJ before classes started at 8 am.)
It was all so normal, I got up, bathed, dressed, watched a cartoon on Nickelodeon as I did my hair. Before I left the house, I said good bye to my mother who was still in bed, as she didn’t have to be to work until 9 that morning.
I rode to school with my father, who was happy and excited to go fishing with his friend, Mr. Robert, who is actually a preacher at a church 2 blocks from my high school.
I remember, that morning, all I wanted to know and find out about was Michael Jackson, who, with his brothers, had just finished a couple of concerts at Madison Square Garden the night before, Monday the 10th. In my childish exuberance, all I wanted to know was how Michael had looked, what he had worn, what he had performed, all that sort of stuff. I was only fifteen, and Michael, 43 at the time, was my entire life.
So my dad dropped me off and said he’d see me at 4 that afternoon.
As he drove off and I started to the cafeteria for breakfast, I had no idea that by the time he picked me up that afternoon, the world as I knew it would have changed forever.
I finished breakfast around seven thirty, and at that time, unbeknownst to anyone I knew, the first plane had already struck the Twin Towers, as it was about 9:30 in New York.
I was doing the teenager thing. Goofing off with my friends in the library. And I didn’t see anything on the internet, because I went straight to the Michael Jackson fan club, rather than opening an engine like Google or something.
I was ignorant to it all.
The bell rang at eight--which meant it was 10 in New York, and by then the Towers were starting to collapse.
I went through my entire first period, with no knowledge of anything happening. I never can remember who my first period teacher was.
Then classes changed for second period, which was my French class with Mr. Dombrovsky. And I will NEVER forget it.
The class had barely gotten situated, with my teacher, a really kind of wiry, but buff little man with a German accent--he was fluent in German and French--picking up the chalk to write on the board.
That’s when his door went flying open so hard, it banged as it hit the wall. Startling everyone.
The Spanish teacher from next door came running in, absolutely hysterical, crying and screaming.
And before anyone could say anything, I remember her just shrieking,
“Oh my God! They blew up the World Trade Center! They attacked New York!”
Everyone was kind of stunned, and Mr. Dombrovsky was trying his best to calm her and the Spanish teacher was steadily crying and screaming and telling us to come see the news, as she had a TV monitor in her room.
So automatically the room emptied out and packed into her class.
Two teachers, and like sixty kids, were all looking at this little A/V monitor showing the planes flying into the building and blowing up and collapsing.
At the time, it didn’t connect to me I was looking at a live feed. I thought it was a computer reenactment and I was just so stunned.
And that’s when someone asked me one of the most frightening questions of my life.
A girl named Shannon, a classmate of mine, who was beside me, turned and asked,
“Tiffeny, isn’t Michael Jackson in New York?”
In that time I hadn’t given Michael a thought and I almost threw up when I realized that YES, he was in New York City! The same New York City now in flames and teeming with bedlam and hysteria.
I didn’t know what the World Trade Center was. I mean I was just a kid who didn’t travel except to beauty pageants and church functions. I wasn’t as savvy as I am now, and in my mind, looking at the buildings, I thought the Twin Towers were like a fancy hotel.
And in my head, I had the image of Michael Jackson, fresh from his concerts in his pajamas, drinking coffee, reading a newspaper and the next thing he knows there’s a plane in his ass.
I literally thought that in the rubble with all the other unfortunate people which was already so terrifying, Michael Jackson was one of the ones buried in this hellacious act.
Now at the time, I didn’t know that the planes crashing were a deliberate act. I had assumed that it was an accident.
And then through the day, as some kids were being taken from school by worried parents, it was revealed that it was a terrorist plot.
And by then, the Pentagon in Washington DC had also been hit.
I was moving in a bit of a haze. Before I had been solely worried about Michael, but when it became clear that it seemed planes were just falling out the damn sky all over the country, my worries shifted to my parents.
(Which I know, I KNOW I should have thought of them first and I feel guilty I didn’t!)
I knew where my mom was; she was down town at a local welding supply place, but I was terrified a plane would crash land on her and kill her and her coworkers. I mean I didn’t know anything. I couldn’t even call her, the lines to the place were busy, busy, busy.
And I had no clue in hell were my father was. He was on a fish pond in the boonies as far as I knew.
(I later found out that my dad never did make it to the fish pond. When he and Mr. Robert stopped for the bait to fish with, everyone in the bait and tackle shop were ganged around the TV and when they found out it wasn’t a movie playing on the screen but REAL, they hauled ass back home. And Daddy has not been fishing since. We just buy our fish from the grocery store now.)
But at the same time, I couldn’t leave school. I had no way home and my house is across town from the school. What if a plane fell as I tried to walk home?
Nothing happened in school that day. No lessons were taught. Who the hell cared about Napoleon and Waterloo when one of the country’s major cities was in flames, along with the nation’s capitol?
People steadily drawing their last breaths as we tried to take a pop quiz? The world was upside down!
Every single TV in school was playing the news over and over and over.
I vaguely remember, off and on all day asking several teachers if they knew anything about Michael Jackson.
With everything going so damn wrong, I wanted to know that he was alright. That he’d made it out safely.
That he wasn’t in the Towers, like I had dreaded.
I’ll never forget my English teacher, Mr. Haynes, nearly gave me a heart attack when he lied and told me that yes, Michael had been in the Twin Towers. That was literally the closest I ever came to a nervous breakdown. And closest I came to punching the living dog shit out of a grown man for saying something like that. He did apologize, but goddamn it, it wasn’t funny. I mean I almost passed out in the hallway when he said that. I remember the breath leaving my body and a cold sweat breaking out all over me. And wanting to vomit at the idea that Michael was dead.
In a needless act of violence with so many others.
It was two DAYS before I found out Michael had gotten out of New York with his family and kids alive.
In the meantime, sixth period rolled around, which was my typing class.
The computers weren’t even on. Just the monitor in the room, everyone glued to it.
That was the first time I saw footage of the people leaping from the buildings. Falling 100 stories to their death. That had to have been the frightening thing, now that I think about it. To have to choose between burning to cinders and being crushed as the building collapsed, or leaping and splattering all over the concrete below. An awful way to go either way. I don’t know what I would have done. I probably would have tried to commit suicide humanely, slashing my wrists or taking a bottle of aspirin, something that wouldn’t be so…so drastic and painful.
But I remember sitting at my desk, watching the people leap, still thinking it was a computer generation. The people looked so small, it actually looked fake…and then I saw the camera swing and catch the reactions of the people on the ground.
And I touched the boy next to me, Justin Brown. A boy I had known since the 4th grade and we went to church together.
I asked him, when I saw the people, “Is that real, man?”
I’ll never forget, he wore these silver framed Tommy Hilfiger glasses. And he turned to me, his eyes just huge behind the glasses and said real soft, like he was about to cry,
“Yeah…it’s real.”
We both got quiet, didn’t say anything else to each other. Just watched the buildings flaming on the screen. Justin was the one two days later who told me Michael was alright, too.
One moment, near the end of the day in school sticks out to me.
My last class was some kind of math class and it was at the end of the new edition to the school.
And I just remember trying to get to class, and the hallway being empty. I was late for some reason or other and the hall was empty.
And it was so quiet. The only sounds was of the news playing on each and every single TV in the classrooms. I just remember that, passing a dozen classrooms, full of kids from all grades sitting and watching TV.
A dozen rooms I passed, a dozen times I saw the buildings smoldering. A dozen times I saw people jumping. People broken up and burned and crying. Some dead.
I saw dead people.
I just wanted to go home. Wanted to hug my mom and dad and tell them I loved them. Wanted to know Michael was alright.
Nothing was normal. Nothing was right. I was scared to death.
School finally ended. As I left, the news was still playing. All the kids were somber and sick looking. It wasn’t noisy like it usually was. The life had been sucked out of everyone.
I was so happy to see my father, and hugged him till he turned blue.
As we left my dad kept saying “Bin Laden did this…”
At the time, I just assumed “Bin Laden” was a white guy named “BEN LADEN” because my dad never hooked the Osama in front and it was days before I found out that “Ben” was “Bin” and of middle eastern descent. Hell, before 9-11, I had never heard of Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran or any of those places. I mean I had never heard of Bin Laden before. All of this was foreign to me.
When I got home, I turned all the Tvs off. I had had enough of death, and I just sat and waited for my mom to come home. Hugged her till she turned blue too, I was so happy to see her.
Glad she was alright.
It was a week and a half before lessons got taught in school again.
People, my classmates, my teachers, people I saw everyday were traumatized by it. My best friend Ebonie, had a grandmother who lived in New York and was a wreck until she found out her grandmother was okay. Her grandmother lives in Texas with her now and is just the sweetest person and I’m glad she was spared and I’m glad I know her because she is so kind.
I had another friend, , who lost an uncle in the Towers Tragedy. The building collapsed on him and they never did find his remains.
That’s just two stories out of thousands.
I was affected terribly by it. Its been eleven years, and if I hear the sound of an airplane anywhere close to me, I hit the floor.
Like duck and cover like I’m being shot at.
Once about a month after the attacks, a low flying plane passed over my house. I literally ran out of my house, screaming for my father, who was outside in his garage, tinkering with a car.
The plane had passed so low, I just knew it was gonna hit the house and kill me. I was afraid of planes. I AM afraid of planes.
I still refuse to get on a plane and have never flown. Michael Jackson couldn’t get me on a plane if he appeared naked with candy stuck to him and told me it was safe.
It’s just a phobia that developed in relation to 9/11. Before, I had just been scared of heights, and never entered my mind that you could hijack a plane.
Hijack a car--a thug with a knife appears, gimme the car bitch, yeah that could happen--but a plane, 30 thousand feet in the air with security and all on it, it never occurred to me.
The world was upside down. Mr. Dombrovsky, one of my favorite teachers left school at the end of the term to serve with the reserves.
He’s alive though he didn’t get hurt or killed overseas, thank God.
It’s just weird and crazy when I think of it. All the poor people that died.
You know, every time I watch the Jacksons from MSG, a part of me wonders, just how many of the people cheering and clapping and having a good time, enjoying life, got up and went to the Twin Towers and lost their lives?
For no reason at all. I just look at them and wonder and it disturbs me.
Because when I was 15, I used to always say that once I saw Michael Jackson I could die. It was a joke and everyone took it as a joke.
I stopped saying it after 9/11.
Because I know somewhere in that building, somebody actually did do that.
Carrying on about work at the water cooler, maybe even discussing the show and BOOM it was all over.
That was frightening.
And it has kind of traumatized me and I was nowhere near Ground Zero. I don’t trust anyone. I’m nervous everywhere, even at home under the covers.
I don’t rest really. I’m always worried. Because anything can happen anywhere.
In the last ten years, crime has gone up, not just terrorism, but in general, thefts, murders, etcetera.
9/11 was kind of the end of innocence for me. Opened my eyes to the world. Fifteen was older than most kids, but still young to learn about that. I mean my life was a bubble before that. I went to school, was a good student, went to pageants, went to church. Came home. All little self-contained bubbles from the outside world. All I knew of the world was Michael’s fans and how he played foreign countries. I never thought of anything bad like that happening to the country as a whole.. Not like that.
I didn’t know bad people like that existed.
Afterwards, I was just scared.
And you know its sad, because eleven years later, I’m twenty-six years old and I am still as scared as I was as a fifteen-year-old.
And I think about the future. My friend Stacie has a 2 month old son, who’s my godson. A beautiful little baby boy. And all I can think is I don’t want that boy to live scared. I don’t ever want him to feel like I feel, scared to live, scared to be. Worried…never.
He should be happy, and enjoy life and be peaceful.
One day I hope to have a child of my own. I don’t want her scared either..
All children should feel safe. When I was fifteen, I lost that.
And never got it back.
But while I’m, scared and admittedly a bit frazzled I do realize that other people had it much worse. The people that experienced it.
Losing loved ones, watching loved ones burn, be crushed or jump.
In a documentary on 9/11 I heard a survivor who got out just before the buildings fell said as he ran through the streets, trying to get away, he saw pieces of bodies all over the sidewalk and in the street.
Like a war zone. An arm here, a torso there.
Another survivor at the Pentagon said he tried to pull a man free from the impact zone and when he flipped him over, the top half of his body was charred to the bone, his eyes gone. The man was dead.
That sticks with a person the rest of their lives.
And I think anyone who was old enough to be aware of what was happening with have something that sticks with them.
I just pray for everyone.
May God help those who lost their lives, help their souls find peace and also help those left behind to find peace too
I just wish the world could be calm and safe again. If that’s even humanly possible.
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