September 11, 2001, started as any other day had started for me for the previous few weeks: it was Tuesday, which meant I had college Algebra at 9:30 and no desire to show up to that class. I sat on the narrow dorm bed in the dorm room I shared with a guy named Josh and opened a packet of strawberry pop tarts to consume while watching the morning news and trying to overcome my executive dysfunction’s urgings to stay in. There, on the 13” TV I had brought to share – thick, black plastic and a built in VHS player at the bottom, right next to the red and yellow receptacles for the kind of video/audio cables that had become ubiquitous. There was a CNN anchor getting excited and talking about a passenger jet that had just crashed into the side of the World Trade Center in New York City. At eighteen, my first thought was, “Well someone’s getting fired.” Surely air traffic control or the pilot had made a major mistake. Then, before I finished my breakfast, a second plane repeated this feat, and it became clear that this was no accident. By the time the third plane slammed into the Pentagon, the highways at the edge of campus and the side streets were all empty. Classes were cancelled; people were advised to stay inside. Outside, I could hear people gathering in the common areas and worrying that we might be next, as the tallest building in Lexington. I hadn’t the heart to tell them that the difference between the World Trade Center and our dorm were significant. These were the first attacks on American soil since Pearl Harbor, and they transformed America.