September 11

September 11.
A day that will forever be known as September 11.
And everyone will know what it means. 

I just had to check my old blog posts to see if I ever posted this, can't find it, so I guess I haven't.  30 years from now I want my kids to know what I was doing on September 11. 

Jeramy and I were living in a dump in Murray.  (You think I'm kidding, ask Jeramy.  It was the scariest 6 months of our lives).  I was going to school part time and managing my first store full time.  Jer was working at eBay.  My alarm went off and the DJ's starting talking about an airplane flying into one of the twin towers.  It was x96, so I thought it was a joke and hit snooze.  When it went off again, Jer turned to me and said, "Is this real?"  I said "Nah, it's X96", but got up and turned on the TV anyway.  I got there just as the second plane hit. 
We were glued to the TV in shock. 
I finally had to get ready to go to my finance class. 
My finance teacher used to work at The World Trade Center.
He was not in class.  (Nor was he for a few days.  He lost a lot of friends that day).
We sat in the classroom and kind of just processed it all.
Then I went to work.  I was managing the Centerville store at the time. 
Not a soul came in.  We sat in the back listening to the radio until I just felt numb and couldn't listen anymore. 
My boss called around 5 and said to just close.  No one was shopping today. 
As I drove home, I kept the radio off.
I passed under an overpass and there was a little girl on it - probably about 5 - holding a flag with her dad. 
And then, I cried. 

So much changed after that day.
The manager that was running our downtown store freaked out about being in the "big city" and I was asked to take over her store.  I ran the ZCMI store during the Olympics.  I learned all about bomb sniffing dogs, terrorists, and what to do incase of an emgergency.  I had to be at my store at 3 a.m. for deliveries because they had the city on "large truck lock-down"  during the day. 
There are things that my children will just always assume have always been the way they are now - like at the airport.  They've never gone to the gate to really greet someone as they get off the plane.  They will know words like "Orange alert, bomb threat, terrorists, homeland security" Words that as a child, I never knew.

Each year since, we had gone to Sandy City's Healing Field and walked around the flags.