September 11, 2001 I was a fourteen year old freshman in high school. When the towers were hit, I remember being in a lab class. Somebody came in the classroom and whispered something in my teachers ear. She looked surprised and then told us that the class was dismissed. Nobody knew what was going on. When I got outside it was total chaos. I live in Brooklyn and the streets were chaotic here so I can imagine how they were in Manhattan. I had to walk home from school because every bus was over packed, I think the trains were shut down but I'm not sure. I got home and the news was on but I didn't understand what was being said and what was really done.

I wasnt directly effected by the attacks, meaning I don't personally know anybody who died that day. It took a while to fathom what actually happened and it seemed surreal to me. Because of that day the city is a different place than it was before. The years that directly followed were crazy. Cops everywhere, armed soldiers in random places, police dogs, bag checks, cops in the train stations, cops on the trains. It was crazy. I'm used to all of the security measures now, its a part of the city, just like trees are a part of a park.

As I got older I started to get an understanding of what happened as a cause of that but up to now I don't think I really know what happened because I don't know what to believe. Im not into politics and stuff like that so it just confuses me to hear people talk about it. After that day there have been more terrorist attack attempts but thankfully they were stopped. One that hit close to home was the attempted car bomb on 42nd Street. For a while I just kept saying wow, I go to 42nd Street to hang out sometimes and so do my friends. What if we were there when it happened? I didn't think of the World Trade Center attacks that way because I've never been there and never was in that area. Even though I wasn't directly affected, like many New Yorkers, I still feel the effects of 9/11.