On September 11, 2001, I probably woke up at 5:45 AM CDT. That would have been 4:45 AM EDT. By 6:45, my time, I would have been either en route or arriving at Bartlett High School, in Bartlett, Illinois, just as Flight 11 was taking off from Boston. The other doomed flights that day took off during the next 35 minutes.
My time was spent preparing for my chemistry classes that day, an early-semester introduction to atomic theory. My first class started at 7:40.
By second period, students were coming in saying "Turn on the TV! Something's going on in New York. A plane crash."
In my naive wisdom of a second-year teacher, I turned on the news. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Wow. How does something like that happen?
Somehow I convinced them that atomic theory was much more interesting than whatever they could just catch on the news later on. Class proceded as planned, but I relented and turned on the TV for the last 5 minutes of the period. Before I could process what the screen said and what was being said, I saw more smoke than before billowing out of the WTC. Both towers. TWO plane crashes?
OH. My. God. It was intentional.
The kids had to get to their next class. My next period was free.
I called my wife at work. She worked as a bank teller. She said they had a TV going and no non-essential work was being done. Their eyes were glued. What she told me next was the first thing that day that truly made me feel panic.
Someone had just come in and withdrew as much cash as they were allowed to withdraw. Thousands of dollars.
Throughout the day, we spoke several times. Dozens more had come in to similarly remove cash. It was a busy day at the bank. My wife called the daycare center where our son spent every day in a room with 15 other kids. Parents were coming in to take them home.
Working at a high school, I didn't have the option of leaving early. Life went on. But the principle of In Loco Parentis weighed heavily on me. Some teachers abandoned their lesson plans and put the TV on. I didn't. Maybe it was the fact that Anthony was only 2, but as a parent, I felt the instinct to protect the kids. I checked in with the news here and there, but really tried hard to not let any fear or worry affect the kids. I didn't want them watching something so horrible under my watch. I knew teenagers could handle it fine, but wanted to protect them nonetheless.
It's hard to comprehend now, but I don't think I heard the name "Osama bin Laden" until at least two or three days later. The entire country was shocked, not just at what had happened, but from pure fear of the unknown. Nobody could imagine who would do it. America was not at war. America felt like the safest place on Earth. No war had affected our land directly since the Civil War, and that was us fighting ourselves! Nobody was sure if we'd all wake up tomorrow to even more destruction from seemingly out of nowhere. I remember lots of kids kept home on 9/12.
It was in this aura of fear, and paternal instincts of having to protect my family, that my wife and I (carpooling together) walked into our child's daycare center around 4:00 PM. He was one of only about a half-dozen kids still there.
As we approached the door to his room, we could see sweet, innocent little faces hovering around a TV cart. The children were in a semi-circle, staring at an illuminated screen. We couldn't see what they were watching.
For about 2 seconds, my heart stopped.
It's silly to even imagine it now, but keep in mind, I had spent the better part of 7 hours sneaking peeks at what was on every channel that day. I had spent time debating whether to show the news in class for fear of traumatizing my students. I had the internal protectivism only a first-time parent feels.
My son isn't watching the news. Is he? Would they put that on for them here??
As a walked to a spot I could see the TV, the truth was revealed. There, on a TV cart with a VCR typical of any school, a tape of a Walt Disney World parade was playing. Mickey and Minnie were waving at the happiest crowd on Earth.
It was beautiful.
The sweet, pure innocence of childhood came washing over my brain, and for the first time all day I felt close to tears.
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