On September 11, 2001 I was driving into work at the Greenburg 12 HS when I heard on the radio that a plane had flown into one of the towers in the World Trade Center. After a few minutes they announced that a second plane hit the other tower. I had a later shift than most of the teachers in this school. I started at 10 and the other teachers started at 7 and when I got there no one was aware of what was happening. I guess I was the one who started the rumor mill going and all anyone had to do to confirm it was turn on a radio or tv. Shortly after that the school went into crisis mode as did every other school in the NY area and everything else for that matter. The bridges were closed which caused a problem with getting the students that were bussed from Queens home. It also meant that my wife couldn’t get home from her job on Long Island. Since I had the late shift my son would be coming home to an empty house from school and would be alone until I got there. My wife would normally arrive a little over an hour later. When my principal asked if there was anyone who needed to leave to deal with problems I took them up on it. When my son’s school bus came and he didn’t get off of it I called the school and talked to someone who didn’t have an answer for me. I went to the school and found out that the students there were asked if there was anyone at home. Of course, my son volunteered that information and they kept him. Eventually they opened the bridge and my wife came home. At the time, we got our tv signal off of a roof antenna. I got a very blurry channel 2 and that was it. We started getting cable again and I became for the first time in my life a flag waving American idiot. I even plastered a flag onto the bumper of my jeep. At least, until Bush announced that he wanted to invade Iraq. That and an idiot kid who wanted to kill all Arabs resulted in the song Kill Alqaeda.