I was at a pizza shop in Collegeville, PA, eating with one of my friends when I looked up and noticed a mural of the New York skyline. In the middle of the mural were the twin towers. On a normal day this would not have affected me but this day was different. This day was just a few days after these buildings, along with thousands of people, were taken away from our country. In just an instant these buildings were taken down with our own planes and with our fellow Americans aboard. This same day people were working in their offices in the world trade center doing normal daily stuff, just like me in the pizza shop, only these people can no longer do these normal things. They, like the buildings, are gone.
I do not think these changes in our world had sunk in for me until this day that I saw this mural of the old New York skyline. Before then, the fact that our whole world had changed, had not quite clicked in my head.
I had been going on with my life, even though I was watching it on the news, listening to it on the radio, and reading it even in our own college paper. I was trying not to think about it. What was going to happen now? That was the question that kept me pushing the memory of Sept. 11 to the back of my mind. I was scared. I needed to realize that this is the biggest thing that has happened to our country. Even now almost a month after I am still scared. The question is still in the back of my mind. This event is not something we just read about in a history book. It happened right in front of our eyes. We witnessed history.
The mural will hopefully stay in the pizza shop forever. I believe that we need to see the old skyline to help us never forget what happened on Sept. 11. We need to remember the thousands of people that died and all of their families. We need to remember that every American was affected some way on that day.
