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Transplanted Okie recently asked where I was on 9/11, since that day happened while I was in high school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I avoided the topic for a while, as it’s not really an “upper.” But this week, after encountering several references to the tragedy (multiple songs on the radio, Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” was playing on loop on Showtime), I decided to write a post about it since it’s been on my mind.

Like eight million other Americans, I was in New York City at the time of the terrorist attacks. 84th Street and Park Avenue, where my high school is located, is approximately five miles away from Ground Zero, so I wasn’t in the immediate vicinity when the planes hit or when the towers fell.

I was in the World Trade Center on September 10, 2001. I had two ways to commute to school every morning from my suburban New Jersey home. First, I could catch a bus from my town into NYC’s Port Authority at 41st Street, then take two subway lines to the Upper East Side. That was my primary option. Sometimes, though, I took a PATH train from Harrison, NJ (a neighboring town of my hometown of Kearny) into the World Trade Center, then I would get out of the building and walk to the Fulton Street stop of the 4 subway line and take that up to my high school.

I took the World Trade Center route on Sept. 10. I took the Port Authority route on Sept. 11. Now, in all likelihood, even if I had taken a PATH train on 9/11, I would’ve been out of the area long before the planes hit (8:46 and 9:03 a.m.) or before the towers fell (9:59 and 10:28 a.m.). But sometimes, in spite of myself, I play the “what if” game.

Sept. 11, 2001 was a ‘C’ Day at Regis High School (Since so many Mondays are canceled due to national holidays, the high school had implemented a flexible rotating schedule of classes). On ‘C’ Day, students had homeroom at either 8:40 a.m. or 9:40 a.m. — it alternated each week. On that particular day, it was at 8:40 a.m.

Had it been a ‘C’ Day with a 9:40 a.m., I likely would have taken the World Trade Center route because buses run less frequently during that time and I quite possibly could’ve been outside the building around 9 a.m. as the second plane hit. Like so many others, I could have been one of the pedestrians trying to avoid falling debris (I remember hearing that they actually had to run toward the towers, not away from them, because the debris was falling several feet away.) But that scenario didn’t happen to me and I am grateful for it.

I first heard about the incident right before entering Music class. Some kids had briefly heard about it on the radio, and they were laughing about what they thought was the stupidity of a pilot. They thought it was a two-seater aircraft, and that it basically bounced off the building, not rammed through it. This kind of thing happens on occasion, like when a plane hit the Empire State Building in the 1940s or when former Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle’s plane hit a NYC building in 2006.

But when class was interrupted by an announcement over the intercom for everyone to return to their homerooms, it became clear that this was something entirely different.

I still remember my homeroom adviser, Dr. Wallin, somberly telling us the facts of the morning (as were understood at the time). Two planes had hit the World Trade Center. One of the towers had collapsed. There is a fire in Washington, D.C. (the Pentagon tragedy had often been misreported as a fire).

The morning was surreal. For the most part, the students at the school showed very little emotion. This was an all-boys high school, and crying was something that simply wasn’t done very often. That’s not to say no one was crying. Some students, especially those who had relatives in D.C. or downtown, could not help it. While most of our teachers did an impressive job of trying to appear calm as to not frighten all of the 14-17 year olds, a few of our female teachers broke down and sobbed.

I still remember the image of high school boys comforting female teachers. Ask any woman what it’s like to teach at an all-boys high school, and she will tell you that it can get downright vicious. Boys will be boys, and they will try to get the upper hand and the control of a classroom when a woman is at the front of it. But on this day, that contention had melted away. Students and teachers were mere labels that had been forgotten.

I remember stopping in the school chapel that morning with a couple of my friends to say a prayer. I saw one of my classmates and teammates sitting alone in a pew, head down, clearly distraught. I tentatively approached him and asked him if everything was ok. He told me that his dad worked in the World Trade Center, and that he still hadn’t heard from him. It was 11 a.m.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so helpless in all my life. I wanted to tell him that it was going to be all right, but I couldn’t say that. After all, I didn’t know if his father was dead or alive. I don’t remember what I mumbled, but I tried to comfort him as best I could in his time of incredible uncertainty.

His father did make it out in time, but his cell phone wasn’t working, so that’s why he couldn’t call his family to tell them that he was safe. In fact, many cell phones were not working that day. I don’t know the science behind it, but so many people were using their cell phones and the internet that it seemed to be crashing. It would take about 20 minutes to upload CNN.com on a high-speed internet connection.

Getting out of the city was not easy. Since no one knew the scope of the attacks, every major bridge or tunnel in and out of the city was on lockdown. I finally got out of the city in the late evening. I remember the car I was in was so packed that I had to lay sprawled out in the back of the car (not quite the trunk, but similar), without a seat belt. I never did actually make it home that night. Virtually every soul was trying to leave Manhattan, and the sheer number of cars on the highway made traffic that much more insane than usual. I slept at a friend’s house in Northern NJ. I think we fell asleep to the sounds of Sportscenter (of course, they weren’t showing any sports highlights, just the horrifying images of the day). But that Sportscenter music was of some comfort.

I still remember driving home the morning of Sept. 12, 2001. I saw a billboard for the movie “Pearl Harbor.” The film had long since exited theaters, but for some reason, the sign had never been taken down.

It was a crazy time to be in New York, both on that day and in the weeks that followed. The differences of post-9/11 life were that much more apparent in Manhattan, where you went from seeing joyful cops on the streets to grim soldiers holding AK-47s. Still, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. Sometimes it was scary—especially in those first few weeks after 9/11. Everybody was on edge, waiting for the next attack. Sometimes I would even walk a little quicker through public buildings. But there was some comfort and pride to experiencing this sadness and this fear with everyone else in the greatest city of the world.

All right, that’s enough for this 9/11 entry. I could literally write thousands more words on the topic, describing the electric atmosphere of students who were ready to fight for their country or how it compared to the 07/07 London bombings in 2005 (I was in England, studying at Oxford, on that tragic day as well), but I’m going to wrap it up.

For all of the pandemonium that happened on that day, the only thing I have trouble believing is that it was nearly seven years ago.