"Two planes just crashed in the the Twin Towers!" Mum broke the news to us as we sat at the dining room table working on school. She had just received a phone call from her mom, who got actual channels on her TV instead of snow storms.
My head looked up in amazement. I had no idea what the Twin Towers were then, but I was pretty certain that a tall white building we always passed on our way to Church was one of them. I couldn't even begin to guess what the second one was.
Mum tried adjusting our radio to a news channel, and as the static cleared away, we heard the grim voices of news reporters. A commercial popped on, I think for some sort of "zone alarm," but the station interrupted it, and its music fell flat. The radio station viewed this news as more important than its main source of income? Everyone knew at once (including stupid little me) that there would be no more school today.
The rest of the afternoon we spent over at my grandmother's house (the one with great TV reception), watching the news as it replayed the pancaking towers, over and over again. I remember seeing the plane crash into the tower, and I watched as the building melted down like paper mache in the rain. I was horrified when I learned that certain specks of flying material were actually people who had jumped from their windows in the hopes of escaping the approaching horror and doom.
I saw a battered fire engine and a melted ambulance, and I'll never forget the scene described by a reporter: walking through a river of blood that was thickened by bodies blown up beyond recognition or belief.
Sometimes silence is better than a carefully thought-out-and-phrased ending. I think now is one of those times.
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