A story about 9/11

You know how when you were growing up, every time you walked into a house that wasn’t yours you’d be perplexed by its smell? Every house had a distinct smell that was entirely unique to that family and which was entirely unrecognizable and impossible to replicate? At some point it would become obvious to you that your house also just have had a smell but you couldn’t tell — you were so used to it you’d become immune to your family’s ambient smell.

September 11 sometimes feels like the opposite of that: an experience we all had that feels entirely unique to you, but that is maybe more ubiquitous to every other human. You are more perplexed and fascinated by your perspective on it and the perspectives of those around you feels singular.

I think that’s partly why people still feel the need to talk about it the way we do. Everyone’s got a story and you will probably read a lot of them today and forever.

That being said, here’s my unique perspective on that day. To me, it smells unique:

This story is about a 40-or-so minute window of time somewhere between the first plane hitting and the last building falling. I know for a fact that this particular experience was not entirely unique to me: my third period Journalism class in Junior Year of high school had 15 kids in it.

I will now emphasize again that the class I had during this time was Journalism. That’s important to remember.

At this point, only some of us had any idea what was going on. Some classrooms had their TVs on and were watching, but many of us were just going about their regular high school day oblivious of anything insane happening. I had no idea.

In the hallways between second and third period I got the sense something was up.

I get into Journalism (again, important) and people are excitedly talking. I say excitedly because thats what it was: excitement. At this point, no one had connected the dots that this was some insidious plot playing out, it was just a weird and insane thing going on. Quickly, I am caught up to speed with the most information anyone has at that point: an airplane hit a building.

Memory gets a little fuzzy on the details, but I’m going to say the TV in third period journalism was off. The teacher wasn’t in the room yet. A tall kid goes over, turns on the TV and now we’re all watching this smoldering building.

A few minutes go by. Teacher is still not in the room. We are not doing high school Journalism yet, we’re just watching the actual news.

And the mood is getting worse. I don’t know if the second building had been hit yet, but I’m pretty sure it hadn’t. Either way, watching the tv, excitement gave way to a creeping sense of awestruck fear.

The door slowly opens.

The High School Journalism teacher walks in looking at a clipboard or notebook.

(AGAIN FOR EMPHASIS BECAUSE YOU REALLY GOTTA GET THIS PART: JOURNALISM TEACHER)

Without taking his eyes off the clipboard he walks into the room slowly,

wanders to the TV….

and presses the power button. Turns the TV off.

He then walks to the desk in the front of the room sits down and says:

(totally paraphrasing here)

“We can’t get distracted. We have a newspaper to write.”

The Journalism teacher. Turns off the actual Journalism. The biggest story of our entire lives. In Journalism class.

And it stayed off for the entire period.

I’ll be fair, I don’t think he nor any of us quite understood the scope of what was happening. It is more ironic than mean or dumb. In a way, you have to admire his desire to keep normal — that some story about the field hockey team or vice principal was somehow more important just then.

But at the same time… wow.