Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was an uneventful day for me at school. I don't remember much from the first part of the day, but I'm assuming we went through our usual routine of math, reading, and recess. Nothing seemed wrong.
I walked in the door, set my backpack down, and looked over at the TV. I saw the image of two big buildings burning in the sky. My innocent, first-grade brain was unaware of the atrocities shown by the news' replaying picture.
"Oh, it's just a fire," I said, thinking aloud as I changed the channel to Spongebob. My parents glanced at each other. Their calmness and composure could've fooled anyone.
"Yep, it's just a little fire," my mom said, further ensuring me that it was just another unfortunate event in everyday life.
Little did I know that early that morning, terrorists hijacked four planes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and another mysteriously crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Around 3,000 people died, and everyone's lives changed in an instant. Nothing was ever the same from that day on.
The older I got, the more and more I found out about 9/11. There were always shows about it on TV every year, explaining minute by minute what had happened. That's how I figured everything out. My family, afraid of scaring me, never spoke a single word about it until I was older.
Now, I understand the whole story. What I had first thought of as a small fire, had turned out to be one of the most critical events in our nation's history. I no longer just see smoke coming out of a skyscraper. I see planes slamming themselves into the side of a tower full of thousands of people, accompanied by a fiery explosion interrupting a beautiful summer day. I see thick smoke billowing out of windows people once looked out of as they were working. I see traumatized citizens running as fast as the subway away from a rapidly collapsing building and a dust could as dark as a storm rushing towards them.
Although I didn't know what was going on that fateful day when I was little, I still remember the day of the week everything changed. I learned so much about the haunting catastrophe that I can remember it like it was yesterday and it will stick with me for as long as I live.