On the morning of September 11, 2001, I found myself in my mathematics class. While the morning started like any other, it quickly took a terrible turn with the news of the terrorist attacks. The world changed forever that day; as well as my vision of the world. Until then, terrorism was an abstract concept that had never really affected my life. I will never forget the events of that morning. The first sign that something was out of the ordinary was a teacher's boss, who entered our classroom and told our teacher to turn on the news, then hurriedly left without explanation. Our teacher complied with this mysterious request and turned on the television. The class watched intently, curious as to what was causing this request. The image that developed on the screen is one that will stay with all of us forever. There was a skyscraper, whose name was unknown to me at the time, with smoke coming from it. After a few minutes we learned that it was the World Trade Center in New York and that a plane had hit the tower. At this point, no one knew why the plane hit the tower. I remember being pretty sure it must have been an accident. There was no particular reason for my naive confidence about this, just a refusal to accept that it might have been intentional. But soon, as we watched the first tower burn, the second plane hit the second tower. In the classroom, people weren't sure what we had just seen. No footage of the first plane had yet been broadcast on air, so this was the first time we had seen either plane crash into one of the towers. At first it looked like the news may have contained footage of the first plane crashing. But this illusion did not last long; the reporter made it clear that we just saw... middle of paper... was going to collapse. I hoped he would stay standing somehow. It had been burning longer than the second tower and had not yet fallen. Maybe the damage was different; maybe the second tower was a freak accident. But soon the first tower also fell. With the collapse of the first tower, the main events of the day also came to an end. The rest of the day was spent wondering what this was all going to mean. Were we going to war? Were we ever at war with anyone? Would there be more attacks tomorrow? There were too many events to absorb in one day. It took them several days to realize the magnitude of what had happened. The following weeks were filled with inescapable images of the carnage that was brewing. The void created that day was more than just the absence of the Twin Towers. It was the loss of our blissful ignorance of the world.