Hillcrest Dormitory

September 11, 2013.

12 years ago today, I woke up and went to my early as balls Acting I class at the University of Iowa.  It was a joke of a class, and we never once stayed the entire period.  Amy let us out early every day.  It was mostly football players like Ramon and Kevin, hot nursing students like Kristin or the tall and oddly sexy whatshername.  She was married to a man who spoke Arabic.  And it was Oddly Sexy Whatshername who-as we were leaving class-mentioned that "some terrorists or something had, like, flown a plane into a building in New York."  It sounded alarming.

I went back to Hillcrest dormitory and there in the halls, all the doors were open and everyone was watching the news.  I sat in Justin's room and watched as chaos unfolded in New York.  He filled me in on the little he knew, and I just watched, not having any idea how I was supposed to respond or what the hell was happening.  As I left to my next class, the campus was eerily empty.  A few students ambled on, and I was one of them.  I went to my Sexuality class with Robert (who Shannon told me used to do lots of coke with her.  I mentioned her to Robert once and he said "Shannon?  I thought she was dead.").  The class was also quite deserted, and Robert-in an uncharacteristically hushed voice-informed us about what had happened in case anyone hadn't heard, then let us leave.  This is when I thought is needed more of my attention, but I still didn't know what to do.

I went back to Justin's room where he was drinking beers and watching the news, getting more and more upset about what he said was footage from...Iraq?...of people cheering in the streets.  The first thing I thought of was how many times Americans have probably cheered in the streets for what turned out to be another country's tragedy.  Almost in the same wash, the name popped up: Osama Bin Laden.  Then again.  And again.  We were inundated with his name from right to left.

I called my girlfriend Jennifer who had been on a camping trip the night before.  She said that she had indeed heard the news.  What she said was eery about it is that the night before, she had been amusing her tent mates by shouting that we should "burn it all down!"  Whatever "it" was, she was having a good time condemning it.  Needless to say, she was offput by the news in tandem with her previous night's rant.

So that's my memory.  I figured it'd be worth sharing.  If I haven't forgotten it by now, I suppose I never will.  But just in case, here it is, framing yet another digital footprint I'm making.

'Murica.

-LS^2