I witnessed the end of the world today. I saw what the world would look like after Armageddon. I drove past the tired piers, decayed and broken with age. Twisted metal heaped onto wooden spokes that stuck out of the murky, calm waters. The gentle waves threw bits of the wreckage onto what I guess could be called the shoreline, and gently licked at them, pushing them until they were far enough away from the water. I saw what looked like a baby's sneaker, next to the head of a Barbie doll and half of a personal computer. I drove further along the highway, hoping to escape the eyeless head of Barbie, lying next to the partnerless shoe. I tried to take my mind off things, take my mind away from what I was doing. I thought of where I was when I heard. I had left my French class because it was just too early in the morning to be spitting and hacking. I was sitting on the toilet seat with my head in my hands trying to catch up on a little sleep. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a new message in the chain of graffiti that has been growing on the bathroom stall. There were the typical MR. JONES SUCKS and PRINCIPAL SMITH CAN KISS MY ASS scrawlings, most of which were gone each Monday morning, once the cleaning crew got to them. There was only one word that fought the cleansing: faggot. How interesting. I was pondering where the irony in that lay when two underclassmen came in and were chattering. I tried to drown them out, but stupidity seems to be immune to that. I heard snippets: World Trade Center, 2 planes, hijacked, burning and collapse. I froze. I must have been hearing wrong, they must have mistaken the tabloids for real life.
            What seemed like only a few instants later, in reality it was probably more like three hours later, I sat at home, watching the television with disbelief, horror and fear. I couldn't believe that such things could happen in my life time. Sure, we read about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and I watched the movie with Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck, but not all the textbooks in the world could have prepared me for that Tuesday.