Do you remember what you were doing on 9/11/2001?

[J-Mann]

I was at work -- I worked as a student aide in the Arts & Science Deans' office at Kansas State, and one of the advisors in the building came in and was whispering about a plane crash to the administrative assistant. I sat right behind her, so I jumped into the conversation -- no one knew much at that point, as it had just happened 15 minutes earlier or so. Our first thoughts were that it was probably a small aircraft, and even then, we were talking about the havoc that such an accident would wreak on the ground below.

I tried to access CNN.com, which was incredibly slow and eventually non-responsive, and as details continued to trickle in, I found an excuse to make it back to my dorm room where I watched the first tower fall. We plugged in a television at work and had front-row seats to all the confusing reports coming in ... at one point, Camp David had been attacked. I had a Spanish class at 9:30 am and remember the young instructor telling the class to calm down and pay attention to the lesson ... she was from Venezuela and didn't have a clear understanding of how it had already affected most of the students. She felt terrible about it the next day. All of my other classes were cancelled that day.

There were gas lines that built up that evening. Gas had shot up to over $5.00 a gallon at some stations. My dad came by to take me to dinner, and we noted the lack of vapor trails in the crystal-clear sky -- the first time I had ever seen a sky without them. I spent the rest of the day -- and actually, most of the rest of the week -- in front of the TV, even after the coverage began to repeat.

The full realization of what had happened didn't really hit me until the morning of the 12th. My roommate's alarm was set to go off at 7:00 am, and it was set to the radio instead of the alarm. At 7:00 am, it went off and started playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes as a tribute to those who lost their lives ... and at that point, it was a very ambiguous number. It was naturally the first thing I thought about when I woke up, and coupled with hearing that music, I couldn't help but cry.