Remembering

I was a sophomore in college on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.

I had an 8am class called "Professional Activities." Part of me wants to stop this post right here and just take a poll to see what people think a college class called "Professional Activities" would cover. If I was you, I'd probably guess that anyone in that class was on some sort of remedial track, required to take vocational classes in hopes that they would someday land a job, any job. It was actually a glorified P.E. class, required of all Kinesiology majors. We covered basic rules and skills of pretty much every sport you can think of, presumably because many of us might go on to teach P.E. at some point in our careers. Or maybe it was required just because it's hilarious to watch a bunch of 20 year olds try to learn archery and folk dancing (yes, I actually learned how to folk dance and, um, arch (?) in college).

On that particular Tuesday morning, we would be covering golf for the first hour and basketball for the second hour. Before all this Professional Activating I headed to the Dining Commons for my usual oatmeal breakfast. Of the 25 or so students who were also there at such an early hour, all but 1 or 2 were gathered around the only TV, located at the back of the room, beyond all of the tables and chairs.

Something was not right.

I silently joined the already silent crowd and tried to discern what was going on. I could tell from the tone of the newscasters' voices that they too were still trying to figure it out. I watched as an airplane flew right into a building, and even though I still couldn't really piece together what was happening, my stomach sank inside of me. I'm not sure I had ever really heard of a "terrorist attack" before, but at 7:58am, as we disbanded to head to our respective classes, I exited the Dining Commons knowing that that's what this was, with no idea what the implications of that were.

Coach Mulder made us golf anyways.

I have no recollection of what he said when he greeted us or what reasoning he gave for continuing on with our golf lesson, but there we were: lined up at the goal line of the soccer field, hitting golf balls into distant hula hoops with 9 irons, under a cover of heavy Santa Barbara fog and eery silence.

At 9am we packed up our golf gear and headed up to the basketball gym, where Coach Moore informed us that we would gather for a quick prayer and then be dismissed to return to the news coverage of what was happening. So we sat, the 12 or so of us Kinesiology majors who had almost every class together. We sat in a circle that felt almost microscopic in that big empty gym, under fluorescent lights that buzzed so loud I wondered if God would even hear us. We prayed for New York. We prayed for America. We prayed for the fire fighters and the President and the families of all the aforementioned. I prayed for my brother, who at that very moment was on a US Navy submarine.

When we left I returned to my dorm room and woke my roommate with the news. It was a time before college students carried cell phones, before Facebook and Twitter. There were probably less than 10 TVs on our entire campus, so we gathered in large awkward groups and watched the news all day. I called my parents from my dorm phone. They were fine in Northern California and I was fine in Southern California. But it didn't seem fine.

It still doesn't seem fine. I can't believe that it's been 10 years.

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