There was blood dripping down the windows.

I was eight years old when my uncle took me to the World Trade Center for the 1st time. He told I’d better not be afraid of heights, and I skipped ahead saying that it couldn’t scare me because I’d been on “super-fast” roller-coasters that went up “just as high.”

When we got to the top, we sat in a row of chairs designed to give people a chance to see how high up they were. The windows were floor to ceiling and extended out toward the chairs so that people could look straight down. My uncle pushed me forward, not realizing that I would fall off that chair. I looked straight down through the glass on my hands and knees and screamed at the top of my lungs.

My journalism class visited the World Trade Center Tribute center where we took an audio tour and a private tour through the exhibits. Honestly, I just kept thinking that it seemed so bizarre to be taking an audio tour of NOTHING. There was no visual to match the audio. I was staring out the windows, trying to reconstruct the buildings in my mind, the way they were. I can only think of them falling.
John Henderson led our class through the exhibits, which included a collage of victims that is slowly rotated- a constantly changing tribute.

“See in these pictures, everyone is smiling?” Henderson said. “These pictures are from vacations, weddings, proms, baptisms…most people are wearing a tux or a swimsuit.”

They were just people. They smiled. They died.

People JUMPED off the buildings, holding hands. That was on television. I screamed when I knew I wasn’t falling. They chose not to fall. The Titanic was going down and there weren’t enough lifeboats.