My roomate and I were sleeping in our college dorm room when the phone rang ridiculously early in the morning. I didn’t answer because I new it was going to be my mother, no one else I knew was up at that time. As the answering machine picked up her voice seemed to echo throughout the small room. “A plane has hit one of the world trade towers,” at this point I could not see the urgency or me having to know this information, I much rather would have been sleeping. Then she said, “a second plane has hit the Pentagon.” Before I knew what was happening my roomate and I were running down the hall trying to reach the television in the rec room as quickly as possible. I didn’t hear the rest of the message until later that day.

As I watched the second tower get hit by the plane, I remember wishing that I had picked up the phone to talk to my mom. Family seemed so much more important at this moment. We watched history unfolding until it was time for class. When I got to campus and realized that class was cancelled, I found myself once again in front of the T.V. The day went on like no other day I remember. I felt as though everything I had ever known had just been ripped away from me. A part of me still feels that way. I remember leaving school, just having to get away and feeling unsafe driving around Sacramento, wondering if the state capitol would soon become a target as well. Days later when I heard an airplane for the first time since the attack, a sound I had stopped noticing years ago, I was horror struck. Hearing the helicopters and jets patrolling the airways above San Francisco as well as Sacramento was also a sound that was hard for me to hear.

That is my 9/11 story. A story that will live with me the rest of my life along with the memory that all Americans now share. September 11, 2001 changed the New York skyline as well as the World.