Hurricane Lockdown

Ah the calm before the storm. That's pretty much what today was. We're in for a long weekend folks. What's gonna happen? I dunno. I hope I don't get cabin fever. Shoot, I don't even know how hard it's gonna rain in Austin.

The influx of evacuees has begun and I can pretty much assume that traffic will be bad Friday and Saturday with people coming and going, mostly coming though.

Like I said before, all this stuff is still pretty new to me. I'm used to April being Tornado Season in Dallas but I'm not used to August/September being a Hurricane Lockdown. Hurricane Katrina happened three years ago and I'm still overtaken by how dangerous it was.

Speaking of the past, today is September 11th, which means it's been seven years since that tragic day. Wow how time flies. I'm sure you can all attest to this but I still remember nearly everything from that day. From the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. When the school year started in August, my 8th grade U.S. History teacher told us that in our youth, we'll all witness some event that will go down in history, something that we would remember forever.

For my teacher, it was the JFK assassination. For me and I'm sure an entire generation, it was that day in September in 2001.

Real talk, I didn't even understand what happened until I arrived at school. The first plane crash in the World Trade Center happened really early in the morning, about 7 AM central time - just about the time I woke up for school (class didn't start until 8:50 at my middle school). I woke up to the radio on my alarm clock and it was this now defunct morning talk show on this now defunct radio station, Hot 100.3 FM. The people on the show were talking about some kind of explosion in the World Trade Center but not many details were out yet.

I didn't really pay attention to it, thinking it was just some kind of accident or fire or something. I was in a hurry so I didn't get a chance to turn on the TV or anything and see the actual images. I left for my school bus and when I arrived at school, it wasn't complete chaos since I'm sure many other students were unaware of what had occurred but you could sense that something wasn't the same, the vibe, the general atmosphere.

I remember walking through my school's front lawn and passing by these two repairmen who were parked out in front. I overheard their conversation, something along the lines of, "Yeah, plane crashed right into it, huge explosion, there's smoke everywhere, lots of destruction."

When I went into my first class, English, everyone in the classroom was buzzing about what happened. The bell rang to begin class and we still were chatting for like minutes after. My English teacher finally got the class to quiet down and he didn't even really talk to us about what had happened for I'm sure even he wasn't completely sure of all the details. Then we resumed our normal English lesson.

It was during my 5th period U.S. History class where we really had a chance to understand what really happened. My teacher actually spent about half the period telling us all the details and rumors and all. For a kid who didn't really follow foreign issues at the time, I was overwhelmed.

The rest of the day actually continued normally. By the afternoon, most of the students were back to their normal activities - playing pencil break, the X game, Licks, stuff like that. We were actually wondering if they would cancel football practice after school but nah, they didn't. We did hold a team prayer for all the victims before we started practice though. I still remember that sunny, cloudless day perfectly, staring up at the sky during practice, thinking how it could be so quiet, so beautiful here but in New York City, things were the complete opposite.

I got home at about 4:30 and my mom had the TV on. That was when I saw those horrifying images for the first time. It was crazy, unreal. I don't think I moved from the TV that night; didn't even bother to do my homework.

It's amazing though how clear that whole day still replays in my mind.

Well, I think that's all for tonight. Everyone stay safe from the hurricane, I'll keep all of ya'll in my thoughts. Holla!