September 11th Remembered

Where were you when the world stopped turning?  I was in my first year of teaching a class full of innocent children not too far from DC. I remember the AP going door to door telling the teachers but also telling us not to tell the students because several had parents that worked in DC. Over the next few hours, my class slowly diminished as parents came to pick up their kids. The other kids questioned why others were getting picked up and I had to play dumb. At lunchtime we turned on our tvs in one teacher's classroom to see what was going on. This is when I found out a plane went down in shanksville PA which is a mere 20 miles from my mom and dad'a house. Less than a minute of flight time and it could have been a lot more devastating for me. After work I went back to my apartment alone where I graded papers while watching the news coverage wondering what was going to happen next. The next day I did my best as a young 22 year old to answer questions from my students. After all, I had only been teaching for two weeks and was clueless myself.