Where Were You Five Years Ago?

Here's my story:

I was a senior at Purdue, and on Tuesdays that semester I had four classes spread througout the day: 9:30, 12:30, 3:30, and 6:30. I got up around 8:30 that morning to get ready for school, and immediately went to the shower instead of turning the TV on. Around 8:55 the phone rang, but since I was still rushing to get ready (I'm slow) and since most early morning calls at Purdue were telemarketers, I let it go to voice mail.

Around 9:05 I saw the light on my phone was blinking indicating I had a voice mail, so I knew the call wasn't a telemarketer. It was my mom. The message was like, "are you watching TV? A plane hit the World Trade Center! Just thought you'd like to know..." So I quickly turned the TV on and saw both towers burning and replay footage of UAL175 hitting the south tower. Somehow, I immediately knew exactly what was happening. I called my mom and said something like, "that second plane was at least a 737, they're hijacking these planes, and if they have two, who knows how many more they have! I've gotta go to class, so let me know if anything else happens."

Just after my 9:30 class started, my cell phone rang. I normally wouldn't have my phone on in class, but given the extraordinary circumstances, I got up and went out into the hallway to take the call...I knew what it was going to be...something else had happened. I walked back in the class and said, "you all know the World Trade Center got hit by planes, right? Well, they just hit the Pentagon too...somebody's attacking us..." Everybody wanted to cancel class but the teacher said no, so we begrudgingly sat there for the next hour. At 10:30 I left class and joined just about everybody else there, walking through campus talking on my cell phone. My mom told me a plane had crashed around Pittsburgh. I then asked her "are the towers still standing?", expecting her to say yes. She said no. I raced back to my apartment and skipped my 12:30 class.

Classes that day weren't cancelled as a whole, although to my good fortune it turns out my 12:30 professor did cancel his class, so I didn't miss anything. I did go to my 3:30 and 6:30 classes, both of which were at the airport. Around 8:00 that night, during my last class, we were on the airport ramp...it was pitch black and so quiet one could here a pin drop. I finally got home around 9:00 that night. My roommate and I were so shaken by the events that we each left our televisions on all night long.

Another surreal moment took place the next day in one of my classes on campus. The silence of no airplanes over the normally busy Purdue airspace was noticable to everybody. Then all of a sudden there was a loud jet engine roar. A girl in class said, "oh my, what's that!?!" I said, "don't worry...it sounds like one of our fighter planes." Who would have thought such a conversation would need to occur in the United States just 48 hours prior to that? It was an extraordinary and truly scary period of time.