September 11th, 2001

Never forget, ok?

Now, I know there's probably a lot of you out there who were way too young to remember any of it... But I remember exactly what I was doing that day.

I woke up early, at about 4 in the morning. I had slept in the living room so I'd be able to hear my family moving around, getting ready. All my stuff was already ready. My clothes were folded on the end of the couch, and my life jacket and lunch box were on top. I got up, scrambled into my clothes, put my hair in a pony tail, and scarfed down my breakfast. I had never been fishing before, so I was excited.

I got in the car with my family and turned on the defrost button. The leather was cold on my back, despite wearing a t-shirt, two sweaters, and a jacket. When the windshield was finally clear enough to see through, we backed the car out onto the street and set off. The drive was a long one, I don't remember how long, but it took awhile.

When we finally got to the docks, I stepped out of the car and took a minute to enjoy the air. There's a certain smell that fishing water has... I don't know how to describe it, but I love it. We went down to my uncle's boat and he steered us into a good fishing spot. It was so dark though, dawn hadn't yet come, that I couldn't tell how we were supposed to know if there was a fish on the line. ...I'd find out soon enough.

We put the bait on our hooks and cast the lines. We were using glow in the dark lures, but they were soon just barely visible in the water. And, we, like every other fishermen before us (and there were a lot on the water that day), waited. And waited. And we waited some more.

The sun rose, and my uncle thought he felt something at the end of his line, so he reeled it in using a technique gained from years of experience. There wasn't anything on the end of the line, the tricky fish ate his bait and the lure. So he cast it again, and we all waited some more.

It was starting to get hot out now, it was about noon, so I pulled off my jacket and sweatshirts, leaving the t-shirt on under my life jacket. We set up the poles in these hook type things so if a fish got hungry, we wouldn't lose the poles. Then we had our lunch; sandwiches.

More time went by, and finally a fish was caught. Followed by another. One snagged on my line, and I attempted my uncle's technique, everything was going good, I got it above the water, it was flopping like crazy, my uncle got the net out, and the fish jiggled off.
If nothing else, at least I got a laugh out of that one, it's not every day I get splattered in the face by a wet fish tail!
We fished for a few more hours before my uncle steered the boat back to the dock.

We left the boat, I remembered my extra shirts, and we got back in the car. On the way home, I turned the radio on to hear that there was a state of national emergency, two planes crashed into the twin towers.

I wasn't sure what to make of that, after all, could something *that* bad possibly happen on such a good day? But after watching the news that evening, I knew that yes, something absolutely terrible can happen on an otherwise perfect day.

So what I'm saying here is... Please don't forget. No, it wasn't a good day in our history, but it happened. So fly the flag, show some pride in that we made it through. Remember those who didn't make it, and rejoice for those who did.

-Kj