9/11/01 - Mrs. C's Story

From he 9/11 Reader's Project - here's Mrs. C's story:

My story is not very exciting. Little Elf was a toddler and Emperor was my snuggly baby. We took a nap together in the morning. It was so peaceful. September is the month when things start to get cooler and a nap with a sleepy baby is one of the most blessed things in the world.

The phone rang.

D asked me if I've been watching the news. Um, no... What's going on?

He told me a plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City, and that a second plane just hit another tower and the buildings collapsed.

Yawn... huh? OK, this is not possible for the buildings to collapse. And... with two planes, it couldn't be an accident?

Duh! Just... turn on the news, ok?

Um, ok, but D... you are not understanding because you have never been to New York. Those buildings are really big.

It's on the news...

No, see... the buildings, they're REALLY BIG and they can't fall down...

*sigh* Just turn on the news...

I did, and it looked like he was right, though of course I was quite sure that the news people had fallen for an elaborate hoax. Any moment now, some clown with a cell phone camera will break in to the news on air and show us the buildings are JUST FINE. Imagine the nerve of these newspeople, broadcasting all this stuff! You see, it isn't really true because the buildings are really big.

I think it took me about two days to believe the news was real. And what convinced me that it was was a flag flying at half staff. I looked around town. Other flags were at half staff. Looking more, other people had flags everywhere.

So it *is* true. The flag told me so. Looking back, it's strange that I would not believe all the people on tv. I mean, really believe them deep down. I had to look around to see that other people believed it first. Patrick and G believed it, and within weeks I had little drawings everywhere of planes flying into buildings and Islamics being blown up by bombs. I don't think I saved these. I don't think I'd want to.