Worst Day of History
What can I say about the tragedy that hasn't already been said? I am disgusted, I am pissed off. I know I've complained about this country before, and I may still somewhere down the road, but we need to realize that this is the best place to live anywhere on the globe. I am proud to be a citizen. Military service is not something that has ever appealed to me, but I suddenly I have a reason to consider it. I do not want to be separated from my family and friends, but if it comes to that, I'll do what I have to. People are comparing this event to Pearl Harbor. They say the biggest diffrence is the number of victims. Alot of people havnt realized another major diffrence... The pearl Harbor victims, God rest their souls', were all military. We lost thousands more civilians in New York alone, than we did military in Hawaii. If you are not pissed off as all hell, there is something wrong with you. There is too much in my head to type right now, but here's something to sum up. It's a paper I wrote for one of my classes. I was supposed to compare the worst day in history to my own personal worst day. I wrote this paper the day it was due, which was the very day of the disaster. Is that not an eerie coincidence? A paper on the worst day of history due on the worst day of history... i'm not the greatest at writing essays, and this was very last minute. I had to email it to my proffesor by midnight. i finished around 11:57pm.
On September 11, 2001 the nation faced the largest, most devastating act of terrorism in its history. I woke up around 8:00 that day going through my day as normal. I debated whether or not I should get out of bed and shower, or stay in bed and relax some more. I cursed my school schedule for starting my day so early. A shower later, I walked in the kitchen, where the TV was left on from when my parents left for work. It was a day like any other.
The first thing I heard was that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. This is a simple statement. I don’t know why, but I assumed that the building was evacuated. When you hear something like this, you don’t think of human life right away. You’re just in awe of the news that’s happening. After the other plane crashes, one tower falls, and the other tower falls; you start to think of what the news has not yet mentioned. Innocent life has been taken away. People have died. As a person, you feel overwhelmed by the fact that thousands of people have died. You are so overwhelmed that you cannot make sense of it. If you hear that 10 people died, you feel the shock. If you hear that 10 thousand people die, you know you should be shocked, but it doesn’t quite register. It’s like saying a kazillion people have died. It’s not personal enough to feel. Once I understood what was going on, I almost crashed my car. The talk radio station I tuned into on the way home from class had just said that the center for controlling the nation in case of a terrorist action was inside the Twin Towers. I had also heard that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon in Washington DC. The host on the radio said they hit the Army center portion of the Pentagon. I’m not sure how true either of those facts turned out to be, but I suddenly felt afraid for our nation security. I felt a terror like I never had before. My eyes started watering and my throat swelled up. The reality of this event was sinking in. This was not a ‘Die Hard’ movie. These attempts on our country are real.
Let’s not forgot the loss of precious human life…
The enormous sorrow and physically demanding grief that I felt the day of my friend’s funeral was the same felt by thousands of people who lost their loved ones. I cannot imagine the emotion filling a victim’s family. Sorrow coupled with outrage. This is the day many American’s remembered that our country is fragile.
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