From MemoryArchive
Who: Meaghan Geraty Ehni
What: 9/11
When: September 11, 2001
Where: Houston, Texas
I was starting my
senior year at
Lamar High School in
Houston, Texas and was looking forward to going to college at
American University the following year. I started that morning waking up to excruciating pain in my mouth. But today was the day that I was getting my
cavity filled and hopefully would be able to get a good nights sleep. It was my own fault anyway, having had enough
cotton-candy to feed a whole pre-school class at the
church bazaar at
St. Vincent de Paul the previous month. I arrived at the
dentist office and the
nurses brought me into the little office and started to clean my mouth. I never liked going to the dentist since I had my
wisdom teeth pulled out the previous year and my mouth swelled up making me look like a
squirrel with a mouth full of nuts. After they were done, the dentist walked in and administered the
Novocain and started to go to work. A minute later, one of the nurses came running into the office and announced that a plane just struck the
World Trade Center. I was very confused; was it an accident, was it intentional, was she a
pathological liar and just wanted attention? I didn’t know. Her visits became more frequent into our room with updates of the events that soon followed. My dentist mentioned to me that his daughter’s
fiancé worked in one of the buildings and hoped that he was alright. I sensed his frustration with the lack of information that we had at the time but was very impressed with the professional demeanor that he displayed while filling my cavity. When the cavity was filled he told me that I was too old for cotton-candy and to take care. I gave him a
hug and said thank you for fixing me and that I hope his future son-in-law is okay. I left his office that day thanking god that the only pain that I was suffering from was from a cavity and not from the loss of a loved one that so many thousands of
Americans unfortunately experienced that morning.
External Links
American Dental Association
American University
