It was the beginning of my 7th grade year, I was sitting in class at Immaculate Heart of Mary school, right where Ocean Parkway runs into Kensington in Brooklyn. We heard one loud bang in the morning. A little bit later we saw a huge plume of black smoke coming from the direction of Manhattan. Then another loud bang, powerful enough to raise the dust in the room. I was getting very nervous because both my parents work in the city, I feared for the worst - that there was a huge out of control fire and they were caught in it. About 30 or 45 minutes later, we started to see hundreds of white specks of light flickering in the direction of the smoke, and it took another 20 minutes for them to get close enough for us to realize that they were individual pieces of paper. It made no sense at the time - the teachers wouldn't tell us what was going on, but I could see some of them crying in the hallways. At this point I was furious at them for not telling me what was happening in Manhattan. One by one, parents came and picked up their kids, some of them in tears themselves. I was one of about 12 kids left at school when Frankie's mom came to get him, and he ran back inside and yelled "The twin towers fell and there's war!" The first mental image I had was of soldiers fighting it out on the streets of the city. It wasn't until I snuck into the teacher's lounge and watched the news reports that I found the truth of the situation. I feel a little guilty now, but the first thing I felt was relief that my parents were alright. Then, I wondered how long it would be until the perpetrators were killed. The next day, we found out that the reason the teachers had been trying to keep it from us was that one of the students had lost his father in the attacks, and they didn't want to have to be the ones to tell him.
Considering the quality of my memory, I'm surprised this had been etched into my brain with such detail. I guess everything that's important is.