September 11.

It was around 8:50 AM when I heard the school intercom go on and the principal asked for the Emergency Response Team. I was in fourth grade at Roland Rogers and at first, I had no idea what was going on. When I got home later that day, my dad called me and broke the tragic news. The World Trade Centers and the Pentagon has been attacked. The first plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 AM. Just about 17 minutes later, at 9:03 AM, the second plane crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. I remember watching all news channels showing the images of the towers getting attacked over and over again. I was told both towers collapsed not long after it was hit.

I was only ten years old back then. I did not know the amount of devastation and why this had happened. My dad came rushing home, got into details about it. But even then, I could not even start to imagine the amount of destruction. The news only showed how it was hit and the colossal piles of concretes and all the dusts in the air. I remember it like it was yesterday when we went outside with either red, blue, or white plastic cups and stuck the cups in the fences to make it write "9/11 We Will Never Forget." Later, I started to think about the kids that lost their parents, especially for the young children. I probably could not deal with the fact that my parents were confirmed dead or missing.

The world has changed tremendously since September 11th. The most visible change now is how tight the airport security became. People now have to take their shoes off, be searched, they even check your toothpaste to check for explosions, and passengers cannot bring a bottle of water into the plane. Second, people are scared when they hear airplanes and they involuntarily end up looking up at the sky. What about the people that survived? They live with dreaming nightmares of this day. Some even moved to a new house without stairs because of the bad flashbacks. That shows how much devastation it caused on the people and the world.

We all learned