Not Today

I came into class a half-hour late.  The teacher shot me a disapproving look, rolling her eyes in my direction, but she didn't say anything.  Sometimes she would tell me, "Rae, you won't always be able to get through life by the skin of your teeth."

Her prediction hasn't come true yet.

I ignored her lecture.  I half-assedly worked on my homework due the next period.  I daydreamed about the time when I would leave this one-horse town.  I didn't hear my classmate barge into the room and tell the teacher that there was a fire at the Pentagon.  No one knew what that meant.

I looked up from my distractions when she turned the television on.  There was an airplane, and a building, and then nothing but smoke and rubble and despair.  I saw it, but it didn't seem real because it couldn't be real. I heard the words that formed sentences that said horrible things, but they couldn't be true.  Years later I would experience this emotion of disbelief again when a strange doctor woke me from my fitful sleep to tell me he had found cancer inside of me.  No.

I had been an adult for all of 9 hours.  I had an appointment at three o'clock to enlist in the Air Force.   I was passing a note to my friend to invite her to my birthday party.  I didn't feel like an adult.  Those people weren't really dead.

We watched with jaws agape for hours, I don't know how long we stared.  Some students got up and left in frantic silence.  No one asked where they were going.  The bell kept ringing.  No one moved.

When I got home, my family sat in a silent circle while I carefully excised the wrapping paper off gifts and stacked them neatly without looking at them.  Every few minutes we could hear the sonic boom of a jet mobilizing.  I wonder if the pilots knew their destination, or if they just felt the same urge as everyone else.  We have to do something.

I was eighteen, and all those people died.  I never had a birthday party again.  I was late to school the next day.

Comments

[Katie]

Thank you for sharing this, what a beautiful and sad post.

[Jeannette]

There seems to be that defining historical event that marks each generation. Whether it be D-Day, the day Kennedy was shot, the day the Challenger exploded, or 9/11. You get that eerie feeling remembering the day and then somehow you realize that life goes on. You magnificently captured it all in your words.

And for the record, I would have ntoiced had you not made it to another birthday. Many of us in the computer would. I celebrate you on your birthday and hope that you had a wonderful day, even if you enjoyed quietly when no one was looking and refuse to admit it. I hope the joy snuck up on you!

[Cary]

Uggh...a beautifully written post.

My best friend was unlucky enough to get married on September 10th. He spent his entire honeymoon on Kauai staring at a television screen.

Thanks for sharing :)