But a Jape

“Oh hey, I’m halfway done with this comic and I’ve still got a week left before the 11th! I might actually finish a comic on schedule this time!”

– Me, the week before 9/11/2024, before deciding to procrastinate for 2 months

Oops, I was supposed to finish this 2 months ago! Ah well, I’ve already told you guys plenty of times that I’m bad at this schedule thing.

Anyway, this has always been a personal story of mine that I’ve gone back and forth on considering interesting enough to share with people, so I’m just gonna share it with the Internet and see what your judgment is. Because it feels like everyone who was alive in the US at the time has their own story about what they were doing on 9/11 and so many people’s stories involved watching the event unfold live on TV. So I’ve always found it pretty interesting that in my experience, the biggest event in the world was happening right in front of me (or rather, some distance to my left) and I was somehow completely oblivious to it the entire time.

And my teacher saying, “Finish your tests, then you can look at the plane crash.” is something that’s really stuck with me. I remember Ms. Ericson being one of the younger teachers I’ve had, she could very well have been in her 20s-30s at the time, and being around that age now, it makes me wonder how I would have handled her situation. At face value, what she said seems incredibly callous and out-of-touch, but I can’t remember what her emotional state was at the time. Was she as dispassionate as her words sound or was she just trying her best not to scare a bunch of elementary schoolers?

Either way, I don’t even remember if we got our tests back. But I’m pretty sure I did well. I was very good at spelling.

– James