9/11 Informative Speech

11. I always knew that it was an extremely sensitive topic to discuss. Every year at school, all my teachers would talk about how terrible and traumatizing that day was, how firefighters from the five boroughs were brave enough to go to the World Trade Center, and all of those kinds of comments. I practically have it memorized like a tape recorder. I get it. 9/11 destroyed our nation’s sense of immortality. I almost felt guilty that I didn’t feel as bad as all those people who lived through it. I was merely an infant—I didn’t really live through 9/11. It just felt like the world had always had increased, dramatic security and Islamophobia—all caused by a day in infamy that happened years ago. Isn’t it a little too much? 9/11 wasn’t really a
I ran past West Broadway and Church Street, intersections at Chambers Street. Four gunshots. Those were bullets, my friend shouted. We started running even faster, jaywalking and petrified with fear. The situation became even more dire. I passed Church Street onto Broadway. I heard some more shouts—was it safe? Please, please don’t tell me I didn’t run fast enough. Turns out, my calculator, its batteries, and a few books had fallen out of my backpack. A young man said, “Ma’am! Your book-bag is opened!” The man picked up all of my fallen belongings and kindly handed them to me. “Take it easy, Ma’am,” he said. I couldn’t run anymore with my hands full of batteries and books, so I walked more slowly. My friend waited for me near City Hall. I asked him to hold my stuff while I called my dad. I panicked as I spoke to him and couldn’t formulate words
My hands were trembling. I didn’t really talk with my friend. The sound of the bullets and shouts were still fresh in my memory.

I got off at 14 Street-Union Square to take the L train. Everyone around me just acted so normal, like everything was okay. Everything was not okay. How could they all just stand there typing on their phones? Suddenly I heard some more sirens from aboveground. People just obliviously glanced up and then looked back down at their phones. No one on this platform had the knowledge that I had. My eyes started swelling with tears, which then started streaming from my eyes. I was scared to death, and nobody knew about it.

I greeted my family with hugs and sobs. I told them about what happened to me, and they asked me how I felt. How I felt? I didn’t really feel a feeling. I felt like I was in some parallel universe, or a movie scene—the director was going to say, “Cut!” at any moment. But the director never appeared. This scene was too