I was 18yo, a freshman studying engineering. I woke up later than usual for my morning class and rushed to get there before being late.

As I hustled across the large open parking lot between my dorm and the building my classroom was in, I saw a classmate walking back to the dorm. He started yelling. As I approached, I heard him say, “They just blew it up!” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Blew up what?” I asked. “The twin towers! They just f*&$ing blew it up!”

I kept walking to class and walked in to see a mostly empty room with a few students huddled around a TV watching the news. That’s when I learned what my classmate had been going on about. The first plane had just hit the first tower in New York. I would continue to watch the news that day and watch the carnage unfold.

I emailed my uncle, who was in the military at the time, to ask him what he knew. He was in intelligence. I remember him writing back and telling me that war was coming and to pray.

I went to the Christian student center at the church I was attending. I spent the day with friends talking about how this would change things. In a lot of ways, this was the end of my childhood. It was the end of the time between the Cold War and the wars against terror. The US was a hegemon in peace alone but for a short time.