CURRENT QUESTION: WHERE WERE YOU ON 9/11 7 YEARS AGO?

I was in my freshman dorm room, checking the Primus bulletin board before heading off to breakfast, and I saw posts saying "oh shit, some dude just flew a plane into the WTC! What the hell? Bad Pilot? Was he on drugs? Fall asleep?"

and another one "oh shit! another one just flew in"

and I ran downstairs to the lobby, as we didn't have a TV.

I didn't go to breakfast. I sat there and watched the towers until the first one fell. I felt the pit of my stomach fall. It was like my heart fell out of my chest.

I remember thinking right then "that isn't supposed to happen. Steel structure buildings don't fall from fire."

My RD came in and said, "I would hate to be President Bush right now."

I thought about it for a second, and said "are you kidding? I would love to be him right now. With a tragedy like this, I could pass any legislation I wanted."

I hate being right about shit like this.

I went to English class, while a lot of others were skipping class.

They'd brought TV's out into the hallways so people could get updates on what was going on.

English Class continued as normal, and our teacher did something very brave, and taught class as if nothing was happening. It was surreal.

Later, back up in my dorm that night, there was a girl who was crying in the hallways, because a relative of hers was supposed to be on one of the planes that flew into one of the towers, and the phones were all jammed and she couldn't get through.

That night, I stood out on the front lawn with others, just trying to wrap my head around what was going on.

A lot of kids thought it was the end of the world.

For me, something clicked in my head, and I started paying attention to the news like I never had before. I wanted to know why this happened, what would drive somebody to do something this terrible.

I posted the list of those who'd died on the door of my room so that people could look through it, but also to give people an idea of what was going on. For me, visiting the vietnam memorial made the vietnam war real, seeing the names, and trying to imagine the people and lives attached to the names. Putting a human name on the numbers...

A month or so later, I was sitting on the floor of a friend's dorm room, and I saw on the news crawl that congress had passed an "anti-terrorism bill" and a light popped on in my head, "anti-terrorism bill? but terrorism is already illegal, why do we need more laws?"

so I investigated to find the text, and it was monstrous. Hundreds of pages of incomplete statements and citations, and filled with a labyrinth of references. It was impossible to tell what it actually said.

Later the ACLU and the NY center for constitutional rights came out with their own analysis. It was the USAPATRIOT act, and the allegations they made about this bill went against every moral fiber in my body and soul.

I'm an Eagle Scout, and part of the requirements is to study government at the municipal, state, and federal level, and to demonstrate an understanding of the constitution and the philosophies that our nation was founded on.

We are so lost, and so far from anything like what I was taught America is supposed to be.

I was listening to Jay-Z's freshly released classic Blueprint album. Bought it early as heck at Target, well before the planes hit. When someone told me a plane hit a World Trade tower, I assumed like a small plane, and some poor old bastard was dead. Boy was I off by a few thousand people...