Child of the City

Hi! I’m a 10 year old boy and today I have the day off from school. I have a doctors appointment for a routine check up scheduled for today Tuesday, September 11th 2001 at 12:00 p.m. Normally I don’t like my check ups because they’re so boring, but at least I get to miss school for a day and go with my mom to work for the morning. We live in Staten Island, New York, but my mom works in lower Manhattan just a few blocks away from the twin towers of the World Trade Center. My dad also works in lower Manhattan where my mom works, but he’s off work today because he’s sick, so he’s at home in the bed. I have an older brother and two older sisters, they were jealous because I was a lucky fool who didn’t have to go to school today because of my check up.

So we get to my mom’s office building and please don’t ask me what she does because I don’t know, I’m 10 years old for cryin’ out loud. She does work in a cool four story building though. Of course it’s not big like the twin towers but I like how high up I can see everything from where we are. My mom said her work day won’t really get started until about 9:30 so at 8:oo a.m. we’re gonna go to this restaurant with a few of her coworkers to eat breakfast before they start the day. The restaurant is just a block or so closer to the twin towers than we are, so I like that we’ll be closer to the towers and I can see them better. We get outside of my mom’s building and start walking down the packed Manhattan streets to get to the diner we’re gonna eat at. When we get there the diner is pretty busy but we’re still able to get a seat with my mom’s three friends. I got my food, which was French toast, bacon and eggs with orange juice and finished eating maybe 15 minutes before nine o’clock.

As my mom is getting the check so we can pay and leave, we suddenly hear a very loud boom from outside. Everyone stopped and the store filled with a bunch of “oh my Gods” and “what was that’s”. After the loud boom the whole area around us started to shake, it was like an earthquake was happening. While the shaking was happening I looked outside the diner window and saw a bunch of junk falling out the sky. It looked like pieces of metal both big and small pieces. It was a lot of glass falling out of the sky as well. Someone in our full diner yelled “EVERYONE GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!” as all the junk fell from the sky. It did look dangerous enough to hurt us if we got hit by any of it. After what seem like a really long minute the junk stopped falling, but there was still what looked like confetti falling out of the sky and it wouldn’t stop falling.

A few people inside the dinner went outside to see what was going on while everyone else stayed back. The three of them went outside and looked around like they were confused, but then they looked up and stared at something that made their mouths drop. They then came back in the diner and started yelling “THE NORTH TOWER IS ON FIRE!!!” Those words made everyone run to the windows and look up. They were right, the first tower of the World Trade Center was on fire.

After that everybody went outside to get a better look at the tower and yep, it was covered in smoke. A bunch of other people started filling up the streets and the sidewalk watching the tower in shock. My mom put her hands on my shoulders staring up at the tower. She was shocked like everybody else. It’s like she forgot about going back to work, but then I looked up the street at her job and saw everybody who worked in her building had come outside and was staring up at the tower in shock. I have to admit it was scary looking. A lot of the people around us started saying it was a plane that flew into the tower, which I think is true because the hole in the building is shaped like a plane.

I crept back into the diner where they had a tv on the news and started listening and the news also says it was a plane that hit the building. The crowd outside starts getting bigger and looks like a couple hundred people out there. When I go back outside the diner I look down the street towards the towers and see people coming out by what looks like hundreds. A lot of fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances started coming past us racing their way to the towers. As people who worked in the towers were coming out, fire fighters and rescuers were going in the towers. After a couple minutes I could hear scattered scream from everyone looking up at the towers, it’s like they could see something falling from the towers that scared them. While staring up at the very smoky building out of nowhere I see a big airplane flying past the Statue of Liberty.

At first I couldn’t tell where it was going, but then I noticed it was getting close to the second tower of the World Trade Center. As the plane gets closer and closer…

HOLY CRAP!!!! THAT PLANE CRASHED INTO THE OTHER TOWER!!! Everybody in the streets screamed and ran for cover as the pieces of the building started falling everywhere. Me, my mom and a lot of the people who were watching ran back into the diner while others ran up the street. Once again there was junk falling from the sky in a really dangerous way and everyone started taking cover again. My mom was holding me tight, shaking and almost in tears like she was crying out loud. My heart was beating really fast and I was scared. I didn’t know what was happening, but I know that plane flew into that tower on purpose. “Mom what’s going on? Why did that plane fly into the tower like that?” I asked her. “Because it’s an attack, honey. It’s a terrorist attack.” she said. I don’t really know much about terrorist aside from the action movies I watch with my dad, but I do know that this is something bad happening.

With all the chaos happening around us my mom gets a call on her cell phone. She picks up right away and answers with a quick “Hello, yes. We’re going now, you too.” She hangs the phone up and tells her coworker friends who are still with us that all the offices at her job are being evacuated and her boss has told everyone to get to safety and find their families. My mom then tries to call my dad, but her phone suddenly stops working. Other people around us are also trying to make calls, but their phones aren’t working either. My mom’s friends get back with us and let us know their phones aren’t working either, probably because the plane crashes messed up the phone lines and so many people are tryna make calls.

With thousands of people still piling the streets leaving the towers and buildings around us, my mom and her work friends haven’t moved us yet because they’re too afraid we’ll get trampled and separated by the large crowd. My mom and all the people outside also say there are people jumping from the buildings and they don’t want me to see them. While we were waiting for the right time to beat the crowd some more bad news came up on the tv in the diner. The news said a bomb or something went off at the Pentagon.

Everyone at the diner started watching the Pentagon news and many believe that it was also a plane that crashed into the Pentagon. I actually think it was a plane too because the smoke coming out of the Pentagon looks like the same smoke coming out of the towers. Oh my God! We really are under attack. As the crowd continues to grow and move outside someone comes in and tells us that FAA which is the headquarters for air travel has shutdown and that every plane in the country has to land immediately. While we’re being filled in on all this news out of nowhere we start hearing this loud rumble and the whole area starts to shake like an earthquake is happening. Everyone in the dinner starts to scream and wonder what’s happening. We all look out the window and see everyone running up the street. While watching everyone run up the street we can also see that’s it’s starting to get very dark and cloudy and some of the people from outside started running in the diner. When the last couple of people ran in they quickly closed the door behind them because there was a gigantic cloud of dust coming out way.

After the diner door was closed and locked it was pitch black outside from the dust and everyone in this packed diner was terrified. I was scared to death and didn’t know what was happening until some of the people started screaming that the south tower had collapsed and that’s what the dark dust was. We’re all scared as I don’t know what, but all we can do is wait for the dust to settle. Little by little the dust started to lighten and we were finally starting to see outside the diner.

We start seeing people who were walking in the streets out of the fog of dust. Then we heard a large bullhorn going off outside and saw people running. A firefighter from outside ran in and said “You all have to evacuate this area now. The south tower already fell and the north tower is bound to fall soon.” My mom said to me “Come on, baby, we gotta go.” With her friends right beside us we and the rest of the big group of people in the diner ran out with the rest of the people in diner. When we got outside there was a new huge crowd of people in the direction of the upper Manhattan area away from what was left of the towers. There were a bunch of firefighters and police telling everyone to evacuate the entire lower Manhattan area. It looks like thousands of people are walking across the bridges to evacuate the city.

Holding each other hand in hand, me, my mom, and her friends all join the giant crowd in running towards the George Washington Bridge. As soon as we get almost away from the dust we all hear a loud rumble behind us. When we all turn around we see the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsing.

Everyone screams in terror while still running as fast as we can. When we reach the bridge we start slowing down a bit, but still walk as fast as we can to get away from the city. Once we finally reach the other side of the bridge me and my mom are met by four people anxiously waiting on us, it’s my dad, my sisters and my brother. Once they see us we run right into their arms and they all catch us with tears of joy. We made it, we really made it. The question that 10 year old me ask now is: after going through something this terrible, where do we go from here?