Where Were You?

For a class activity she is conducting, my colleague Jaimie asked each faculty member to share a few memories of our own experiences of 9/11. Here were my recollections:

                Most mornings I listen to sports talk radio or a book on CD on my way to work, but on the morning of September 11, 2001, for some reason, just before 7:00 MST, I decided to switch to the news. I heard the report that an airplane had struck the north tower of the World Trade Center. I figured it was a catastrophic accident—some poor amateur pilot or something.

                To my astonishment, I was listening live via KSL when another plane smashed into the south tower. I was idling at a stop light when I caught the reporter’s off-guard reaction. My own, a lowly mutter: “Oh, crap.” Both towers started coming down before I pulled into the school parking lot.

                In my classroom I turned on the television and absorbed report after report as they rolled in with a play-by-play of the collapse of the towers, the bravery of the first responders, the climbing death toll. Shortly, it was the story of the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 crashing into a nondescript Pennsylvania field.

                We stood on a turning point in American history.

                The previous day, my 9^th graders read a short story—“American History”by Judith Ortiz Cofer: Elena, a young Puerto Rican girl, remembers the day President Kennedy was shot. She was in the ninth grade, and she hated school. The only bright spot was her crush on a boy named Eugene. On the day of the assassination, she had made plans to study with him. It would have been her first visit to his house. School was dismissed early, and she wandered home, thinking of Eugene. When Elena appeared at Eugene’s door, however, his mother turned her away. She did not want her son making friends with a Puerto Rican girl. Returning home, Elena found her building silent and everyone in mourning. Absorbed in her own tragedy, Elena couldn’t share in the public sorrow (summary courtesy of McDougall Littell’s The Language of Literature 9).

                That morning, in the midst of public tragedy, I witnessed several parallel stories woven into the lives around me. Like Elena from the story, several complained about trivial concerns such as how embarrassing it was that someone else was wearing the same shirt. Why a certain girl hadn’t responded to a note. Why a young football player was going to quit because he didn’t get any minutes until the fourth quarter of a blowout. How the copy machine was still broken. I even overheard a few students unsympathetically shrug off the morning’s attacks with an indifferent “So what? Who cares?”

(taken from http://www.albany.edu/news/16124.php)

                In class we drew the parallels between the story from the day before and the current event still happening in our country. The conversations of my classroom that day dealt with putting life into perspective. Both teenagers and adults uncovered truths of human existence and relevance—discoveries similar those of Robert Fulghum’s 1959 experience with Sigmund Wollman (Seattle Times, August 29, 1991) or Henry Smith in Gary D. Schmidt’s Trouble. Despite the apathetic few, national pride inflated. Compassion grew. Where the stereotypical teenage blinders once held fast; eyes of empathy and worlds self-discovery opened. With the world on a perpetually pessimistic fast-forward, sometimes, unfortunately, tragedy is compels us to stop and scrutinize our personal perspective. Once back in check, we realize what really matter and we uncover our best selves. Only from the ashes can a new phoenix rise.

To read the rest of the stories faculty members at Spanish Fork Jr., High contributed to Jaimie's activity, check the school's website.