First times…

Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.

As a nervous and excited 11 year old, waking up on the morning of that suspenseful day you’d long known was due to arrive at some point. your very first day starting high school.

My thoughts were far from worrying about what might be happening, or about to happen, around the rest of the world. Selfish though it may sound, as an adolescent, anxious, self-absorbed, interested in matters which were anchored to the slow process of a mind awaiting maturity and growth, away from the confines of that which has not yet been learned, thoughts were still at at that age, narrow and shackled by a desperate desire to please others, or ‘be the best at everything.’

I was thinking.

‘How am I going to make new friends’,

‘what will my form be like?’,

‘are the teachers going to be nice, will they be strict and uncompromising?’,

‘how will I het to learn my way around, what if I get lost?’, ‘

‘How will others see me?’,

‘How quickly will I get my first detention?’

‘Do I look cool enough in this?’

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As it happened, my first day in year 7 turned out to run smoothly. I boarded the after school bus around 3.45pm, relieved by my reflections that the anticipated ‘doom’ or ‘disaster’ which I had feared for that day, didn’t actually come to pass for that important day. As I stepped up into the double decker 961 school bus home, I felt proud, and excited about telling my Mum ‘how my first day had gone.’

Yet when I entered the door through to the living room, finally home, I was taken aback by an unusual sense of unease. My mum didn’t come flying through to greet me at the front door, as she must have heard me come in, and the first words she said to me, far from my expectations of questions like ‘how did it go!?’, instead, were utterly different. ‘The Twin Towers have collapsed.’

The news was on, my mum was affixed to the TV screen which displayed shocking scenes of a plane slamming straight into the height of that first tower, followed by a cannonade of shocking orange flames, engulfing and blitzing the top of the tower, mesmerising and haunting the onlooking eyes below, and across screens, as it tore through the building like a violent and shocking cloud.

All my news about my first day at high school vanished in an instant, too. We had only just been there… it felt like yesterday, when I’d been staring down at the chaotic beauty of the busy streets and blocks, so far down below me that it was almost incomprehensible. We were stood in the sky. All around me was the blue of the sky, and the huddle of fellow tourists and sight seers alike. I felt amazed to be standing on top of such a famous and magnificent building. I was certainly the only one in my class at school who had been so high up in the sky, stood on solid ground, without the aid of being hoisted up on a plane.

‘What!? How has this happened?’ I exclaimed.

I too had now forgotten all about the matter of how my first day had gone. I watched in horror as the first of the tallest skyscrapers in New York City proceeded to plunge to the ground, smouldering in a coil of smoke and shrapnel. This vast and momentous famous construction, reduced in seconds, into incomprehensible rubble.

Shivers spread across my entire body.

It was not just for the horror of imagining the people who crumbled to dust, who had been inside that tower, helpless as it collapsed, watched in devastation by onlookers at the scene, crying and stunned, terrified for themselves and for their families, and those trapped inside.

I was stunned, and horrified.

That could have been me, and my whole family.

That year, in April 2001, my family and I had gone to New York City. Our first family holiday in years, and an extremely special one, since it marked a turning point following my Dad’s long suffering of illness, which had finally began to alleviate, so much so that we were safe and stable enough now to embark upon the holiday of a lifetime.

Mere months before, I’d been standing on the top of the twin towers myself. I was a 10 year old, transfixed by the immensity of the height, and the indescribable beauty I could behold, leaning against a fixture, staring in awe at the vastness of the city. The astonishing sight of the seemingly minuscule bustle of people and traffic below, the perspective of a whole city and its waters, the sight of the Statue of Liberty in the distance, parks, yellow taxis, the small dots indicating the heads of people below, as they weaved and waltzed, like pixelated dots, being chased by Pac-Man around a maze of a city, as it could be perceived from above.

I knew how privileged I was to actually have found myself on top of the twin towers, the world trade centre, an experience I would never forget.

Using my ‘old-skool’ children’s camera, relying on a film which thankfully still had at least 10 snaps to go, before it was filled, and I needed to replace the film, before I could continue capturing pictures in time, able to snap up some brilliant ones, if and when they suddenly emerged.

That was lucky, to have space left in my camera’s film. I was about to use the last of the reel to capture a snippet of time which would go on to become a part of significant history.

I took some of my own photographs of the scene from the height of the top of the twin towers. I knew I’d cherish these photos forever, and that they’d always reignite that awe. But little did I know then just how precious my amateur childhood snaps would be.

I’m quite certain I still have a few more of such photos. When I find them within the sheets of old and worn photo albums, I will add them again to this post.

No 10 year old child will ever take a photo like this one again. This is a great shame, and I know how lucky I am to have this snippet of history, a 2D slice showing time stood still in a moment, frozen as an image, frozen as a memory, frozen in a chance, and a lucky escape, frozen as a mark placed between the balance of time, hanging from this moment to there.

The words ‘9/11’ became a prominent and powerful phrase for so many, following my first day of high school and the coincidence of its fusion with an event that made world history.

9/11 for most people, is that memory and that impact of a catastrophic ‘terrorist attack against America’… the speaking of the phrase itself will cause irreparable pain and grief to the families and friends of lost loved ones.

Politically, the famous date became a precedent to a great deal of political uproar, controversy, dispute, protest, debate, potential misinformation, and a highly destructive fracture into the bones which hold in place, the power and faith for the ‘Democracy’ people once believed in.

It lead to death, it lead to political dissent, the ruin of trust, and the ruin of lives through the wreck of a war.

9/11 is all those things and many more, but for me, it was also simply a collision with one of ‘my firsts’.