The Day

I'm a very news savvy person. I do everything I can to stay on top of the latest happenings in the world, through newspapers, the Internet, and TV.

An unfortunate irony of my life, however, is that the moment I break my rigorous news cycle is always the moment a hugely important event happens. I then end up having to hear about it second-hand, long after everyone else already knows. Then everyone says "but J.J., I thought you follow the news so closely!" and then I feel embarrassed for being careless.

I have terrible allergies. They get particularly bad in the fall, and act up mostly in the night, which is when pollen settles. I slept horribly on September 10, and when I woke up on the 11th I felt horrible. My nose, as usual, was clogged, making it hard to breathe. My throat was sore and raw, and no matter how many times I gargled with mouthwash, a terrible taste remained in my mouth.

To make matters worse, I had to get up early that day. My dad was off on Vancouver Island to testify at a trial, so my mom had to drive me and my younger sister to highschool, incorporating us into her early morning work commute.

I stumbled out of bed late, and had to forgo my usual shower. I'm not even sure I ate breakfast that day. I doubt I had much of an appetite.

My other usual morning routine- a quick check of the headlines on CNN.com, was also skipped.

As the three of us piled into the car, my sister mentioned that she had just been talking to her friend on the phone, who said there was a big news story happening. My mom turned on the car radio to CNKW 98.0, our favorite news station.

"The White House has been evacuated" said the radio. "President Bush's whereabouts are currently unknown, but he has left Florida."

I had no clue what was going on. We had begun to drive.

"The World Trade Center Towers in New York have been destroyed" said the radio, repeating the main story for us latecomers. "Two hijacked planes have collided with the towers. Both towers have collapsed."

It really didn't compute. I didn't feel so much shocked or scared as confused. It seemed like a concept that was simply too difficult to comprehend. How could two towers, towers as enormous as the WTC buildings, simply "collapse"? I tried to wrap my brain around this idea, imagining a big open space where they had been. It didn't seem possible. There must be more too this story than what I was hearing.

The three of us in the car were all in shock. We said very little, but continued to listen.
"Let's go back, I want to see it on TV" I said firmly. I felt very confused and weak at that moment. The radio was such a primitive medium. I needed to see what was happening to New York. My mom ignored me, I'm not sure why. She seemed visibly distraught, and I guess she wanted to continue the routine.

We heard about the Pentagon being hit, as well. Although we would later be able to see that the damage was quite minor, at the time it sounded devastating. America itself, was truly under attack.

"There is going to be a war" my mom said, frightened. I believed her.

I remember we picked up a friend of my sister. We carpooled a lot in those days. She was silent for the trip.

Finally, my mom dropped me off at my school, Dr. Charles Best Secondary. I ran to the cafeteria. The year before, our outgoing principal had bought the school a gigantic big-screen TV.
"If this stupid school has any sense, they will have that TV on CNN" I thought to myself.

Sure enough, they did. A crowd of kids were gathered around the big screen. The TV was showing footage of the towers collapsing. It was such an extremely painful and disturbing image to see.

I noticed one of my friends run in. Zvonimir, a Croatian kid. Sensing the look of confusion on his face, I explained what was happening, quickly."Planes have flown into the Twin Towers and destroyed them" I said to him. "Another plane crashed into the Pentagon, and the White House has been evacuated, and they don't know where the President is." Zvonmir looked shocked. I suddenly realized that he would henceforth always remember hearing the news from me.

As I watched the towers fall, and fall again on the news replay, I tried to think who did this. I wondered if it was maybe Saddam, but then I remembered the crazy rulers of Afghanistan. I had heard some stuff about them lately, making non-Muslims wear special badges and blowing up thousand-year-old Bhuddist statues. Mullah Omar, I remember, was the defacto ruler of Afghanistan, and palsy walsy with Osama Bin Laden, who I had never seen before, yet had heard a fair bit about in recent years. As if to confirm the thoughts of my wandering mind, the TV announced that Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network was the chief suspect in the attacks.

When the bell rang to start class, I noticed that the "information" monitors around the school that usually show schedules and things were tuned to various news channels. As I walked out of the cafeteria into the crowd, I remember seeing a monitor showing Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres being questioned on the spot about the event. "They were supposed to have peace talks today" I said the person beside me. "Not anymore" he replied.

As I stood in the lobby hall outside the cafeteria I can distinctly remember being suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of frustration. I suddenly thought about my cartoons, and watching CNN the other night when they had been discussing the American economy. I suddenly realized the entire political world, as I knew it, was going to be changed forever. I found that to be a very unsettling concept. Already, I wanted everything to go back to normal.

My school's hallways were small, and got very crowded at the beginning of the day, as the whole school scrambled to get to class. As I walked to my first course, my friend Brian stuck his spikey blond head out of the mass of kids.

"J.J.!" Brian called out, "Isn't this insane?"
"This is going to be the new Pearl Harbor" I shouted back.

My English teacher was named Steve Murray. He was an odd, scraggly looking guy, some kids said he was an aging hippy. 9-11 was a day when everyones' feelings were super intense, including political feelings. When we went to class, (which also had a TV tuned to CNN, thanks to the librarian) Murray gave us a thorough lecture. It was pretty much an anti-American rant. Actually, I hardly remember most of what he said; I was more focused on the TV. I remember him asking us why we think America supports Israel (I forget what the "correct" answer was) and telling us about the foolishness of the Vietnam war, and how it destroyed Lyndon Johnson. Murray was usually a crazy, happy kind of teacher. But today he seemed aloof and nervous. He was probably scared. We all were.

Murray was really the only teacher who attempted to do any sort of lesson. My other teachers let us watch the TV coverage and
talk amongst ourselves.

Inbetween classes, as I walked the halls, I showed off to my friends by identifying the various world leaders who were being interviewed on the numerous TV sets. "There's the Prime Minister of Japan" I said proudly. It was kind of both creepy and exciting to see the whole world suddenly focused on one event. I wondered how my dad was doing on Vancouver Island.

I was very close with the teachers at that school. So close, in fact, that I had my own table inside the Social Studies department headquarters, on the third floor. It was a teachers-only area, but they had made an exception for me.

The exception was made by Ms. Fitch, who was, and remains my favorite teacher of all time. She was a stocky woman from the Yukon who shared many of my political beliefs and interests, and had often gone out of her way to provide me with educational opportunities. At lunchtime, I went to see her in the office.

When I think back to the emotions of that day, I realize how overly-dramatic we were. Hindsight has since allowed us to view the events of 9-11 in a larger context. At the time however, there was no context. It would not be an exaggeration to say some of us felt the world, as we knew it, was ending.

Ms. Fitch told me that she was distressed by the fact that she had seen the attacks coming. She seemed to sense the inevitability of a terrorist attack on US soil, and the fear had now come true.

I remember talking with her as she and I stod near the large globe in the office. As we looked at the countries, we seemed to share an underlying assumption that the United States was ending. "I don't know where that will leave us" she said, looking at the large landmass above the 49th parallel. Her fingers slid over to the European continent. "Perhaps everything is going to go back to Europe" she wondered aloud.

After school, I returned home on the bus, saving my bus ticket, dated "September 11, 2001." I have since lost it, but I kept it in my locker for the larger part of the year. It's a bit odd now that I think about it, how the terrorist attacks have become synonymous with a date on the calendar. I don't think any other date in history has been so marked before. I don't think many of us will ever think of the once ordinary date of September 11th the same way again. Today, when I see events at school scheduled for September 11, a part of me feels angry. I realize September 11 is just a date, but to me, it will always be something more. A day I will never feel completely comfortable doing my usual routine in.

When I got home, I watched the coverage until late into the night. Larry King interviewed Senator Lieberman and Mayor Guiliani. There was so much news being covered by so many stations and reporters, but in the end, the story always keep returning to the same message I had heard on the car radio that morning.

Before I went to bed I took one of my artist pencils and scratched out a frightening smoke demon, rising from a tiny skyline. It summed up my emotions. I uploaded it to Filibuster, and it became my 9-11 cartoon.

It has now been two years since 9-11. I wrote this mostly for myself, as a way to codify my feelings and memories of that day. I may add more to this as the days go on. We all have our stories to tell. I hope you have gained something from mine.