"A Day You Won't Forget"

I'm currently procrastinating before going to scrape more floors (!@%!#%!!!!). The History Channel is playing shows about the September 11, and I feel compelled to remember that day. . . I had been a Freshman at NDSU for two weeks, and I had to get up early (by college standards anyway) for Fitness and Wellness class. I got up and got ready in the dark because my roommate was still sleeping and went to knock on the door of the room next to mine, where my new friends lived. One of them was in the class also, and we would always walk together. She opened the door and said "Have you seen this?" On their TV screen was a shot of the two towers. I wasn't really even sure where those buildings were at the time and she said they were in New York. I went back to my room and yelled for my roommate to wake up, turned on the TV, and sat on the floor like a kid watching cartoons because our only non-desk chair was piled with crap. At the time, it looked like only an accident because only one plane had arrived.

We went off to class, which was in the library that day because we were using some sort of computer program where you answered questions about your lifestyle and it told you how unhealthy your choices were. It told me that I drank too much alchohol and not enough milk (big suprise). When it was over, people were gathered around a TV in the lobby of the library and hell had broken loose on the screen. One tower was on fire, one was gone, and the streets were in chaos.

Most classes were cancelled for the rest of the day, and hysterics descended on the dorm. Most people didn't have cell phones yet, so girls would talk in the hall to have privacy from their roommate (which was pointless, because you could hear what they said in the rooms. It actually meant having less privacy!) At one point I went into the laundry room for some reason and was greeted by a teary-eyed girl sitting on the dryer talking on the phone in the dark. Anyone with a boyfriend in the military was in a state of panic. I'm not really the hysterical consipracy theory type, so I just observed all day and didn't say much. In the evening, my roommate and I took our vehicles to a gas station on 19th Ave. and waited in line to get gas in anticipation of a shortage that never happened. The prices were rising though, and we paid $1.89 (That's it!) It seemed like a huge amount. Little did we know what the future would hold...That night, my roommate and I drank some beer in our room that she had in the trunk of her car. She smoked, so I sat on the step of the building with her and the other smokers as they speculated about the day. There was a guy from on of the men's dorms sitting there, and he had a bag of weed in his sock! That was the first time I ever saw it, besides when the Sheriff brought examples of drugs to our high school for a lyceum. What a day!

Looking back, the fear that everyone felt seems kind of over the top, but everyone who was there will remember how uneasy it felt before we had any idea why it happened or who did it, especially since there were attacks in other cities that day, not just in New York City. It could have been anywhere! Were were probably in one of the safest places in America though...

OK, time to go scrape!