Top Ten Tuesday: Remembering Edition

As many of you remember, September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday and September 11th fell on a Tuesday again this year. Oblivious to it, I totally ignored it on the actual anniversary. In fact, it seems all of the blogs I read ignored it this year except this one which happens to be written by an Australian. Interesting, huh? Or maybe sad is a better word? I don't know. I felt kind of bad about it. To be honest, I don't really think about September 11th much. Luckily for me, I didn't really know anyone who died that day. One student I graduated from college with died in NYC. I knew him by name and face, but I didn't REALLY know him. Unfortunately, many many many people were not as lucky as me. They lost their lives on September 11th. They lost their dads, their moms, their sons, their daughters, their brothers and sisters, their husbands or wives. They lost their friends. I can't imagine. Truly, I can't imagine. Anyway, this is a little belated, but it's a topic I was thinking about during my hiatus back in September and I was thinking about it again today so I thought, "why not?". Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is

Top Ten Things I Remember About September 11, 2001

10. I was at work. I was a Director of Education at a Sylvan Learning Center at the time.

9. It was a busy day because we were all supposed to leave the next day to go to Baltimore for the Sylvan annual conference (the first time for most of us to attend.) We were excited because we wanted to go to the Cheesecake Factory while we were there.

8. My co-worker's husband called and told her she had to listen to the radio because a plane had run into a building in New York. I remember thinking, "Who does this man think he is telling his wife what she HAS to do?".

7. At first, they weren't sure what was going on. There was talk that it was just a small plane that does tours of that area of New York.

6. Then the second plane hit and everyone was freaking out. We didn't have a tv, but everyone kept watching it on the internet.

5. I couldn't take it all in so I just went back to work. I pretended it wasn't happening. I just went on making lesson plans and getting materials ready for instruction that night.

4. My in-laws and husband kept calling because they were worried about me flying the next day. Needless to say this fear was unfounded as all flights were canceled.

3. At one point, there was a suspicious plane coming towards Cleveland. More panic. The plane rerouted and later crashed. It was United 93.

2. Somewhere in all this chaos, the Pentagon was hit. I remember being worried because although I knew some people in NYC, I knew a LOT in the DC area. Everyone wondered when the horrible chaos was going to stop.

1. We decided to stay open for instruction that night (even though a lot of students canceled) because we wanted to keep some sort of normalcy in the lives of our students. Which is ironic because at the time it seemed like life would never be normal again.

But here it is, 6 years later, and life seems very normal. So normal that most of us rarely think about September 11th and all that happened that day. Most of us don't think about all those innocent people who died or who lost loved ones. I admit, I'm usually one of those people. But I'm trying to be better. So just a little post to remember all of those lives so personally affected that day. My heart goes out to you all.