I was in a classroom.

When the challenger space shuttle exploded I was 10.  I was in Miss Ivanschenko's classroom at St John's and they wheeled in a TV on a cart so we could watch the coverage.   Our desks were in a U shaped form and I was sitting so I could see out the windows.  I remember my teacher crying.

When America was attacked on September 11,  I was 26, engaged to be married in two months and expecting our first child in eight months.  I was again in a classroom, but this time I was the teacher.  I was teaching 7th grade science in Columbus.  Students had just switched classes and some had come from the same room (which I would find out later to be social studies) and they were talking about airplanes hitting buildings.  I didn't think twice about it~that's how incomprehensible it was to me~I didn't realize they had been watching live TV I thought it was a video~and conversations among 12 year old boys and things blowing up is pretty common~ so I went about our usual routine.  Later that morning, I went down to the teachers lounge and the TV was on.  It was odd for the TV to be on.  I sat down and realized that what my students had been talking about had been in real-time.  I wanted to stop watching the coverage, it was too real and it was re-played over and over and over again...it was too much to handle..especially when you're slightly hormonal!  I chose not to have the TV on in my classroom the rest of the day.  It was too personal for school.  I wanted the parents to get to decide what their kids saw regarding this national tragedy.  I didn't want to cry in front of my students.

I remember the drives to and from work all that week were all talk and no music.  And I remember thinking what kind of world am I bringing this baby into?

I sat down with that 9 year-old today and the 7 year-old too.  I asked them if they knew anything about 9.11 or why this day was important and they both answered, no.  Which doesn't surprise me.  We looked at some of the pictures that were in the paper and I told them how some bad people had taken some airplanes and crashed them.  Then we turned on the TV and found a memorial show playing the Star Spangled Banner (Taylor recognized the song from her concert last year)  We watched a little CNN where they were showing clips from the war in Afghanistan and I told the girls that we were in that war to find the other bad people that had planned those airplane attacks.  While far from a happy ending, I was glad I was able to tell the girls that the main guy has been caught and he is no longer living either.  But enough about the bad guys.  Then we talked about heros.  We talked about firefighters and policemen and policewomen that helped all the people that were hurt in New York and Washington DC.  We talked about soldiers that work to keep our country safe all over the world.

Then we shared a hug.  And I'm sure there will be more questions some day, but for today, this was enough.