I was home sick. Not ‘I don’t feel like going to middle school and was sneaky enough to trick my parents’ sick but 102 fever sick.
I got up around 8:00, had some cereal, and went into the living room to watch Nickeldeon on channel 6. Around 9 I started flipping channels, and went down one to fox 5 to see the first tower in flames.
I went into my parents’ bedroom to wake dad up. I told him, he said it was probably an accident, and then he rolled over to go back to sleep.
Back into the living room I stayed on fox 5 and saw the second plane hit the towers. Then I told dad and he got out of bed.
11 is pretty young, but I was old enough to get it. By then, I remember reading the newspaper in the mornings and listening to WNYC before bed. I had seen some History network shows on Bin Laden and think I had even heard of the Taliban. But I was too young to put together the towers falling down with thousands of people dying.
By noon I took a break from the local news. I wrapped myself in a blanket, walked over to my computer, and booted up Warcraft 3 (I played Orc). Playing a game or two online I remember chatting about what was happening — no-one seemed too concerned.
Would I have still cared about politics? I think so. I remember watching the Bush v. Gore debates and getting invested in that sort of thing before 9/11.
But the psychic impact? I remember the Bin Laden nightmares. I remember asking my parents what was going to happen, and dad saying “sometimes countries have to kill people to keep us safe — so we’re going to find Bin Laden and kill him.” And I remember my sister crying most of all because she had visited Windows on the World with her class the year before and that wasn’t there anymore.
I remember the guns. I had seen big guns in Israel before but never in the US. I lived across the street from the Museum of Natural History, which Giuliani thought was a big enough target to put lots of men with guns around it. For the next week everyone was really scared of ‘white vans’ doing a follow-up attack. The UN had a big meeting with a reception for all the heads of state at the museum. There were gunmen on the roof of my building, and signs that said if you walked in the street you’d get shot.
And I remember the smell. Two days later the wind began to blow north, and the air felt different. It wasn’t like the smoke from a fire you were standing nearby. It smelled a little like someone made a newspaper bonfire the block over, got in your eyes a bit, and felt heavy.