Everyone's got a story about where they were on 9/11, right? This seems like as good as any spot to share mine.
As opposed to most people who experienced that day, it was around 10 p.m. when the Twin Towers fell for me. I was living in Japan at the time, and had just finished watching that awful Arnie movie, "The Sixth Day." I don't recommend it.
Right about when the credits ended, I got a text on my cell from a friend who said the towers had been hit. Shortly afterward, I got another message saying some 10,000 were dead.
I can't imagine what it was like that day in America, when everyone was glued to the TV trying to discover as much information as they could. Getting that same information half a world away was near impossible. I didn't have a TV that could give me English subtitles, so I got all my news from friends who did have those TVs. And, obviously, their news wasn't exactly spot on.
I read two English language newspapers when I lived in Japan. One of them didn't even have the news of 9/11 until two days after. And even then the photo on A1 was in black and white. I was only one of two Americans in the school where I taught, so my Japanese students kept asking me for days how the event affected me, if I knew anyone in New York, how it would change the whole country.
I hadn't been in America for eight months when the towers fell. I wouldn't return for another year. What would you have said?
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