Guardian of Forever
03-11-2002, 07:36 PM
It's been six months today. It surprises me so far that there's no topic on this or EGN about it. I'm not offended or disgusted that there isn't, but I am somewhat surprised.
I remember very clearly that day. The first plane would have hit during my school orchestra rehearsal toward the end. The second hit during my study hall immediately after. I, to be honest, slept through most of the study hall and didn't know about it till the period was almost over, around 9:45 AM EST. My next period was music theory. I don't remember what we did that day, but nobody seemed too worried about the whole thing.
I know it didn't actually hit me what had happened until I was leaving school after fourth period (I get out early...college classes) and I turned on the radio in my car to a news radio station. I began to worry...I went and got something to eat and went over to my mom's as I usually did...I visited for a while, watched the proceedings on TV, and left. I had to pick up textbooks for my first day of college classes which was supposed to be the next day (it was later cancelled). As I was leaving, I heard on the radio that there was another highjacked plane in the Toledo vicinity. That was what convinced me to panic...not because Toledo is close to me (it's about a 3-4 hour drive, and there are no important targets at all where I live), but because of the people I know who live at strategic targets within striking distance of Toledo. I remember driving from my mom's house to the college at an average of about 75-80 mph, running inside to get my books, running back out, driving back to my dad's as fast as I thought I could get away with, and having the radio, TV, and net news sites all up as soon as I got back waiting to hear details on the Toledo plane...
Once I had calmed myself down to rationally realizing there was nothing I could do, my stepmom gave me the good advice of filling up my car with gas. It was about 1:30 PM by then...nobody was out of school or out of their workplaces yet. I filled up my car at $1.799/gallon.
Later that afternoon, I met with a friend of mine and we went to Subway to eat. It was one of those things you do because you're panicking and you want to be with the people closest to you...because you might lose them. This guy wasn't my best friend in the world, but he'd definitely be one of the ones I'd miss the most if everyone died. Of all my memories of that day, the one that stands out in my mind the most is sitting in that restaurant listening to the radio broadcast. They were doing literally nothing but reading off school and business closings for the next few days. We were probably in that Subway for 45 minutes, and they only stopped reading closings to announce that every radio station in that city had set up its website to redirect to a common page that listed all of the closings any of them had received.
When we left and as I was driving my friend back to his house, I began to see the lines at the gas pumps. By this time it was around 5:30-6:00 PM. Cars were literally backed up for blocks at every station, and in Celina, Ohio, that's beyond unheard of. There are 10,000 people in this town and 7 gas stations. When I went past Marathon, I noticed that their going price had been raised to $1.999/gallon for regular unleaded. By 8:30 that night, the Marathon station had run out of gasoline altogether. As far as I know, prices didn't jump any higher than $1.999 here, but I heard the reports of $5-$9/gallon prices in other states and started warning friends and family to fill up...all the ones I had talked to either already had or refused to believe they should.
That night and the few nights immediately after are the only nights since I was a young child that I went to bed deathly afraid that I would be dead before I woke up. I laid awake for several hours staring at a light out my window and wondering what it would be like when the bombs started dropping. I spent that night and many more to follow listening to AM radio stations until the wee hours of the morning when I finally managed to fall asleep. I still get chills when I'm driving at night with a news radio station on instead of my usual music.
When I awoke on 9/12, I found that my first day of college classes had been cancelled, but my high school classes hadn't. Frankly, I was infuriated, but I went anyway. I don't know that anything was accomplished that day at school.
By that weekend, gas had gone down to $1.749/gallon. It continued to drop by about $0.05 per week for a long time until it leveled off around $1.15. It's fluctuated around there, but the current price of $1.269/gallon for regular unleaded is the highest I've seen since the drop after 9/11.
Here is a link to the original comments on fark.com:
http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=45086
and OTG:
http://www.omegatg.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1469
I took the liberty of saving the OTG thread to my hard drive.
Reading these comments brings everything back as if it had just happened. I came across the link on fark and couldn't think of anything else after I read some of the comments. I was going to do an English paper tonight, but I guess that's not going to happen.
That event was just too big...I don't think there's a person in this world who can truthfully say that they don't have a problem dealing with it.
You may never hear me say this again, but God Bless America.
I remember very clearly that day. The first plane would have hit during my school orchestra rehearsal toward the end. The second hit during my study hall immediately after. I, to be honest, slept through most of the study hall and didn't know about it till the period was almost over, around 9:45 AM EST. My next period was music theory. I don't remember what we did that day, but nobody seemed too worried about the whole thing.
I know it didn't actually hit me what had happened until I was leaving school after fourth period (I get out early...college classes) and I turned on the radio in my car to a news radio station. I began to worry...I went and got something to eat and went over to my mom's as I usually did...I visited for a while, watched the proceedings on TV, and left. I had to pick up textbooks for my first day of college classes which was supposed to be the next day (it was later cancelled). As I was leaving, I heard on the radio that there was another highjacked plane in the Toledo vicinity. That was what convinced me to panic...not because Toledo is close to me (it's about a 3-4 hour drive, and there are no important targets at all where I live), but because of the people I know who live at strategic targets within striking distance of Toledo. I remember driving from my mom's house to the college at an average of about 75-80 mph, running inside to get my books, running back out, driving back to my dad's as fast as I thought I could get away with, and having the radio, TV, and net news sites all up as soon as I got back waiting to hear details on the Toledo plane...
Once I had calmed myself down to rationally realizing there was nothing I could do, my stepmom gave me the good advice of filling up my car with gas. It was about 1:30 PM by then...nobody was out of school or out of their workplaces yet. I filled up my car at $1.799/gallon.
Later that afternoon, I met with a friend of mine and we went to Subway to eat. It was one of those things you do because you're panicking and you want to be with the people closest to you...because you might lose them. This guy wasn't my best friend in the world, but he'd definitely be one of the ones I'd miss the most if everyone died. Of all my memories of that day, the one that stands out in my mind the most is sitting in that restaurant listening to the radio broadcast. They were doing literally nothing but reading off school and business closings for the next few days. We were probably in that Subway for 45 minutes, and they only stopped reading closings to announce that every radio station in that city had set up its website to redirect to a common page that listed all of the closings any of them had received.
When we left and as I was driving my friend back to his house, I began to see the lines at the gas pumps. By this time it was around 5:30-6:00 PM. Cars were literally backed up for blocks at every station, and in Celina, Ohio, that's beyond unheard of. There are 10,000 people in this town and 7 gas stations. When I went past Marathon, I noticed that their going price had been raised to $1.999/gallon for regular unleaded. By 8:30 that night, the Marathon station had run out of gasoline altogether. As far as I know, prices didn't jump any higher than $1.999 here, but I heard the reports of $5-$9/gallon prices in other states and started warning friends and family to fill up...all the ones I had talked to either already had or refused to believe they should.
That night and the few nights immediately after are the only nights since I was a young child that I went to bed deathly afraid that I would be dead before I woke up. I laid awake for several hours staring at a light out my window and wondering what it would be like when the bombs started dropping. I spent that night and many more to follow listening to AM radio stations until the wee hours of the morning when I finally managed to fall asleep. I still get chills when I'm driving at night with a news radio station on instead of my usual music.
When I awoke on 9/12, I found that my first day of college classes had been cancelled, but my high school classes hadn't. Frankly, I was infuriated, but I went anyway. I don't know that anything was accomplished that day at school.
By that weekend, gas had gone down to $1.749/gallon. It continued to drop by about $0.05 per week for a long time until it leveled off around $1.15. It's fluctuated around there, but the current price of $1.269/gallon for regular unleaded is the highest I've seen since the drop after 9/11.
Here is a link to the original comments on fark.com:
http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=45086
and OTG:
http://www.omegatg.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1469
I took the liberty of saving the OTG thread to my hard drive.
Reading these comments brings everything back as if it had just happened. I came across the link on fark and couldn't think of anything else after I read some of the comments. I was going to do an English paper tonight, but I guess that's not going to happen.
That event was just too big...I don't think there's a person in this world who can truthfully say that they don't have a problem dealing with it.
You may never hear me say this again, but God Bless America.