Business was slow tonight, so we closed the store early. It was coming home that I realized probably why.

Essay: What I Was Doing When the Buildings Fell

By the time I awoke to start the day, it was already 10 am, 1 pm on the East Coast. When I started the day, the whole country had been in turmoil for hours. I never turned on the TV in the mornings since I'm usually running late. Erica had called that morning, left a message asking if we were alright. I was clueless. I mean, what could be wrong?

I went to Korean class at 11. Half the class was absent. The teacher conducted the class as usual, and I didn't see anything odd, other than that a lot of people seemed to have played hooky. After class, I went to work (at the computer center). I checked my e-mail, and someone asked if the University was staying open despite the jets in New York. The reply was that the University's official position was that they were staying open. All I could think was, what happened?

I began checking the news on the internet. I read about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center. It took me a few more stories to find out that it might have been a terrorist attack. By then, the latest news was that the fourth plane had gone down in Pennsylvannia. But it was information overload, and I had no idea what was going on.

The only other class I had that day was Art. Funny enough, the Department cancelled all classes that day. Or perhaps it's only the Korean work mentality that kept that language class open. I talked a little with the class aide and another student, but I didn't fully grasp what was happening. Then I went to work. I chatted a bit with the supervisors, but I still didn't know what had happened. I had scheduled a meeting for my project team that afternoon at 5 pm. No one showed, except for one person. I wasn't surprised. If I had fully understood what had happened, I probably would have cancelled that meeting.

Finally, I went home and turned on the news. CNN, Fox News, CBS News... every channel. Someone reported that the FDNY had lost three hundred of their firefighters. I was clueless and wondered why and how.

Y'see, I didn't know that the buildings had collapsed.

I just kept asking myself as the news broadcasts kept repeating the same footage over and over was, why weren't they showing some live footage of the towers now? It wasn't until the next day that I realized the full extent of what had happened.

OMG, how clueless am I? Suffice it to say, I joined the rest of the mourning community in the next few days.