By LEAH DUDLEY

J.Hop Times Staff Writer

           Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Thirteen years ago today.

    Think about what Sept. 11, 2001 must have been like. Our country was under attack by terrorists. They hijacked four jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, which was one of the most populated buildings in the world.

   Put yourself in their shoes. What if one day you got up to go to work and in the middle of finishing that letter your boss wants on his desk by 11 a.m., you feel a huge vibration in the floor. You look out your window and see fire and smoke coming from the floors underneath you. You panic, of course. Who wouldn’t?

   You run to the nearest exit but it’s blocked by fire. You realize that you have no way out and start to call your family to tell them about this tragedy. And then you look out the window again you see that another plane has hit the South Tower. That’s when you realize that this wasn’t a tragic accident - this was planned. This was murder. This was an attack and you about to die along with thousands of other people because someone felt your country just wasn’t right to them.

   In all, 2,996 people died because a group of people felt our country just wasn’t right. Why couldn’t they just talk it out? Why couldn’t they just express their feelings?

   I was only 11 months that day, so I really couldn’t understand. But ever since that day people in our country will always have one thing in common that day - we all felt under attack. We all felt helpless.

   We all felt like we were 11 months old and there was nothing we could do for the people dying in those towers.