9/11 Attack, 2001, by Matt Adamson

From MemoryArchive

Who: Matt Adamson
What: 9/11 Attack
When: 2001
Where: Naperville, IL

To this day I can still remember exactly where I was and what I was thinking when the terrorist attacks took place on September 11, 2001. I was a sophomore at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, IL. I had just finished second period Chemistry and was on my way to my Computer Applications class across the building. I got to the computer lab and both TVs in the room were tuned to CNN and were broadcasting images of the first building with a huge hole in it and everything. I remember being so confused as to what was going on. My first thought was that it was a small plane, like a cessna, that had accidentally hit the building because a week or so before that a small plane had hit a building in the northern suburbs of Chicago. I had no idea that it was an organized act of violence intentionally carried out by Islamic extremists. At that point in my high school career, I was basically obsessed with golf (I was on the golf team) and the terrorist attacks did not stop my friend and I from playing golf that day after school. Looking back, him and I had pretty immature and naive opinions as we talked about what had happened earlier that day. We played our usual 9 holes and it wasn't until I got home that night that I learned what had actually happened, and who the authorities thought was behind it. Looking back, that really changed my outlook on life as I realized that anything can happen at any moment. Just to think that someone could highjack a plane and fly it into a building was terrifying to me as a 15 year old and really shook my confidence in the American system, especially aviation.