Lauren Foster’s 9/11 Experience
On
September 11, 2001 fifteen year old Lauren Foster was in school taking the math
session of the ISTEP test.
“I remember seeing the first tower in flames
on the TV that was playing in the office. Our school had a bomb threat called
in that afternoon so we had to sit out on the football field the rest of the
day,” Foster said. “I also remember watching the footage of the plane actually
hitting the second tower over and over again on the news that night. I didn’t
really understand what had happened fully until I watched more on the news. My
first thought was that it must have been an accident for the plane to crash
into the Twin Towers.”
Many
Americans watched or listened in disbelief.
“When
I first heard about what had happened and I watched some of the footage, I
thought, ‘this is the United States, these kinds of things don’t happen here.’
The more I watched on the news the more of a reality it became,” Foster said.
“That was the first time I really started to gain a sense of what things were
like in the rest of the world. Even as a teenager with no direct connection to
anyone involved in 9/11 it really saddened me to watch the terrible things that
happened that day.”
She is
more aware of her surroundings when traveling, especially when flying or
traveling to a large city.
“It
also made me realize how quickly life can change on what seems to start out as
an ordinary day,” Foster said.
