Patti Talks Too Much

The 9/11 Classroom: From Trauma to Awakening

• Patti

Share episode

Send us a text

In this deeply personal account, I share my experience as a Manhattan public school teacher on September 11, 2001, and how that day transformed my life path and spiritual journey.

• Feeling inexplicably anxious the weekend before 9/11, something many others reported experiencing
• Learning about the attacks while teaching and having to tell my students what happened without causing panic
• Witnessing Broadway Boulevard become a silent river of people walking north as the city shut down
• Shopkeepers bringing sneakers to women walking in stockings, bodegas offering water to those making the long trek home
• The heartbreaking story of José, whose father worked at the World Trade Center and never came home
• Coping with trauma by drinking sleepy time tea constantly throughout the school day
• Eventually leaving New York for Florida to heal and begin questioning the official narrative
• How 9/11 became the catalyst for my spiritual awakening and journey toward truth-seeking
• Hoping that ongoing disclosure and questioning will eventually lead to a more transparent and compassionate world


Support the show

Speaker 1:

Hello, this is Patti, with Patti Talks Too Much, and today I'm going to talk about what it was like to be a teacher in a Manhattan classroom on the morning of 9-11. Hello and welcome. This is Patty, with Patty Talks Too Much. And today I am recording a different kind of podcast. I had wanted to do a podcast about the events of 9-11 as we approach the anniversary of 9-11. I had wanted to do it because I was there, because I was in a New York City public high school and experienced what it was like, basically ground zero Manhattan, and so I wanted to share that, and I think what makes it even more somber is that I am recording it. On September 10th, I've worked all day in a high school classroom and as I was leaving work and as I arrived home today, I got the news that a pretty well-known political activist in the United States has been murdered while speaking at an event and at a university. And you know, these are the times, sadly, that we are living in and I just think there is. There is something sad in many ways to have these two events juxtaposed the events of 9-11 and the murder of a political activist in our country. So this how far have we come? How safe are we? How have we really changed? What have we learned since 9-11? So I want to just go back though. And so I want to just go back though and tell you a bit about what it was like to be there. I think people don't. If you weren't there, it's hard to fathom what that experience was like. So I'll do my best to share it with you. So I'll do my best to share it with you, and I'll also share just an excerpt from a short story that I wrote that is in my first published book. It's a memoir, it's a collection of short stories, and one of the short stories that I wrote is a story called Standing Memory, and it is all about that day of 9-11.

Speaker 1:

So what I recall about the days leading up to that Tuesday is that the weekend before I had kind of traveled up. I wanted to get out of the city. We traveled up, my partner and I traveled to Connecticut, to this little town in Connecticut where we had found a cool little place to eat. We had found a cool little place to eat clam chowder Like they had really good clam chowder, and we were kind of spending the day, and I remember it was Sunday. It was a Sunday and I remember feeling really anxious. I couldn't shake it. I didn't know why I was feeling so anxious. And many years later I would learn that there were a lot of people feeling a certain kind of anxiety just before the events of 9-11. So that was definitely my experience. I could not level. So that was definitely my experience. I could not shake my anxiety that weekend. You know, we had gotten out of the city. I thought, oh, it's the city, I need to get out of the city. But even out of the city I was having kind of a hard time and I don't know if it was connected. There are a lot of things going on, so who knows. But I know that a lot of people were mysteriously feeling kind of anxious just before the events of 9-11.

Speaker 1:

So anyway, I went to work that morning. It was a beautiful morning, it was a perfect morning and I remember the sky. People have talked about the blue of the sky that morning. It was a perfect morning and I remember the sky. I mean, people have talked about the blue of the sky that morning. It was just a gorgeous blue sky and at the time I think I said I was teaching in a high school. I teach in a high school now, but I was teaching at that time in a junior high and it was walking distance from my apartment. So I walked to work and we got through first first period and the thing that I know well, one of the things about that day is that it was election day, so there were voting booths set up in our gymnasium and I know a lot of the boys that I taught were particularly, were very upset that they were not going to be able to use the gym, you know, for basketball and gym and such, and so you know those voters you know, taking up our, our gym space.

Speaker 1:

But you know, um, but you know, the day started pretty normally and then it was really shortly after first period that they stopped ringing the bells to change classes and there was not really any particular announcement, just they were not ringing the bells and we needed to just stay put until the. You know, I think there was a brief announcement we're holding bells, hold the students while we're holding the bells, please hold the students in class. That was it, and a whole hour went on and another time for a bell to ring to go to class came and we're all kind of wondering. And then, sooner or later, the teachers are popping their heads out of their classrooms and saying, hey, you know? Kind of whispering down the hall to the next teacher in the next room saying, hey, do you know? No, I don't know. Do you know what's going on? I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 1:

And then finally, the speech pathologist. Right, we had one speech pathologist and she had been given the grim task of going around to all of the teachers and telling them what was going on and basically giving our marching orders from the principal. So it was not something that could be announced over the intercom, it had to be person to person. So she had been given the grim task. And so when she got to my door she looked exhausted, tired and you know, she just kind of at this point she was basically saying it was almost wrote what she was saying and she basically said that the principal wants me to convey to you that there's been a situation downtown that two planes have flown in to both towers World Trade Center towers and they have both come down and I, you know, I'm standing at the, my classroom door with my back to my my students, who are getting slightly rambunctious at this point and I'm looking at her saying are, are we? Are we at war? I couldn't wrap my mind around it. How, how could this be? We had to be at war. And basically she said I don't know. But the principal wants teachers to let their students know what's happening and to tell them that they're going to have to stay here until their parents pick them up or a family member picks them up. And you really need to try to keep them calm. So that was my task to try to keep my students calm and tell them what had just transpired. And it was a task because I was having a hard time keeping myself calm with this kind of news. I'm going to read you just an excerpt from the short story that I wrote about these events and then I'll continue to tell you basically what the rest of the day looked like and the days afterwards, what they look like and what they felt like. So in my book Wildflowers and Present Tenses, the story that I'm reading from and it's just a short excerpt that I'm going to read is called Standing Memory.

Speaker 1:

On the morning of 9-11,1, I stood in a classroom very much like the one I stand in now it was election day in New York City and most of the students were annoyed that the gym had been taken over by voting machines, depriving them of their gym classes and basketball practice. But the heat of the summer was gone and the day was perfect. The sky was the kind of blue that promised the freedom of schoolyards, basketball hoops and picnic tables. At 9.35, my students eyed the clock, as they always did at this time, awaiting the bell that would propel them out of class and into the noisy, chaotic and freewheeling hallways of IS-52. But the bell did not ring. We waited and fidgeted. Finally, the principal came on the loudspeaker. Attention please. He said haltingly. The bells will be held until further notice. Teachers, please keep students in your second period classes. My students groaned. I groaned too, under my breath.

Speaker 1:

I poked my head out of my classroom to see if I could get any information from a neighboring teacher or passerby and noticed most of the other teachers on the floor were doing the same. None of us knew a thing. We had nothing but shrugs to offer each other. Our whispers were interrupted by footsteps approaching. A group of 20 poll workers, escorted by school security, walked stiffly but quickly from the gym to the exit doors Elections Canceled we whispered. Doors Elections Canceled, we whispered. The workers did not respond to our inquiries but walked stone-faced without making eye contact. What do they know, I wondered.

Speaker 1:

Around the time the bell for fourth hour should have rung, a lone figure came through the hall, stopping at each door briefly, then moving to the next. Miss Schwartz, the speech therapist, approached me. There has been an attack on the World Trade Center, she said. She looked exhausted and frightened. The principal had assigned her the grim task of messenger. No loudspeaker announcements could be made for such things. Two planes have flown into both towers. Both towers have come down. Are we at war, I asked. We don't know. The principal wants the teachers to find a way to tell the students without creating panic, and we will not be dismissing anyone until a family member comes to get them. They need to stay with you.

Speaker 1:

I stood like a stone in the doorway of my classroom, my back to my students. They talked and joked and laughed behind me, unaware of having been transported into a new and foreboding reality, even as they sat in room 103. Our world had changed just like that. How could I articulate the incomprehensible? What words could I possibly use to give them the news without causing panic. How could I convey calm when my own hands trembled? Could I convey calm when my own hands trembled, when my own mind swirled? How could I answer a single question when I had not a single answer? Are we at war? The question made me dizzy. So I put it aside, took a breath and turned to my students. My face must have spoken for me. I did not need to ask for their attention. Does anyone have a family member or loved one who works at the World Trade Center? I asked. Hector, sitting in the back of the class, raised his hand quickly. His face beamed with pride my father. So I'm going to leave it there and just share with you what the rest of the day was like. So we did sit with our students all day. I was able to leave around six or seven that evening when the last of my students was picked up from a family member.

Speaker 1:

Now, one of the things that happened was people could not reach anybody. All of the phone lines were down. Now cell phones were pretty. It was pretty early on for cell phones and New York had one cell tower and it was on top of the World Trade Center. So when that came down. Cell phones were out, there was no cell service, and because there were so many people trying to call in and call out of New York, the phone lines were jammed. So it was very, very difficult for family members to call in if you had family from out of state. And I think, eventually, my sister reached the school, and I was able to speak to her briefly in the office and assure her that we were, that we were fine.

Speaker 1:

Now, in my, in my conversations, though, with my students, one of their fears, when they found out about the planes, one of the questions that they asked and it made sense to me was is a plane, is a plane going to fly into our school? You know, there was just this how much in danger are we? And none of us really knew how in danger we were. So, finally, I remember, you know and this was in upper Manhattan, and so I remember when I was finally able to go home and I was within blocks I lived within blocks of the school that I taught at, and it was close to a park, and so I remember going into the park and kind of sitting in the park that evening. It was a little sunlight, it was, you know september 11th, so it wasn't. You know we were, we still had slightly long days, um, and I remember hearing the f-16s that were flying over manhattan island, so they were just making these circles around Manhattan Island and so they closed down Manhattan Island. So you couldn't leave Manhattan Island if George Washington Bridge, and wow, what a sound they made.

Speaker 1:

I think there were two or three in the group that just kind of circled around Manhattan Island and of course there was like New York One was the news and it was just playing constantly, you know these smoldering buildings and then, of course, the buildings coming down. We were all absolutely, um, shocked. There were just people were completely, um, in shock, in shock. That's what I just I remember people being in, in, uh, in total shock, shock. We didn't go back to school for a whole other week, so we were out of school for a week and you know, in during that time, you know, we were just kind of watching the events as they unfolded.

Speaker 1:

Now I will tell you, on that day, one of the most profound things that I witnessed was you have to imagine that there are so many jobs in downtown Manhattan and a lot of people who work in downtown Manhattan are from uptown or they're from the Bronx, right? So they all take the subways downtown to these jobs. Well, when the towers came down, there was no subway service and no taxi service. There was really no way for people to get home once they were downtown, you know, and they lived most of them lived in upper Manhattan where you could afford to live, right. So you know, the working class Joes and Janes who worked downtown had to live uptown because that's where you could afford to live. So here you have all of these people, just hundreds of thousands of people, who have to get home, and some of them they have to get to their children, they have to go get their children, they have to figure out how they're going to get their kids.

Speaker 1:

And what happened was Broadway, right, broadway Boulevard, which goes from the very bottom of manhattan to the very top of manhattan. I lived close to broadway and it went right through um inwood, which is the uppermost part of manhattan, and straight on into the bronx. Well, broadway, bou Boulevard, became a sea of people who were just moving up Broadway from downtown. So there was no traffic on Broadway, it was just people moving slowly up Broadway. You know Broadway Boulevard, and so one of the things that was happening was because it was going to take these people so long to walk, and it was such a long walk that many women in their stockings right were carrying their you know, their high heels or whatever their work shoes, which weren't really going to serve them on a long walk home right up Broadway, you know, up Broadway, all the way right to the top. And so there were, like these little shoe shops along the way, you know, these little sneaker places, and, and more and more, the shopkeepers were bringing, coming out and bringing these women who were walking in their stocking feet. They were bringing them sneakers to put on their feet so that they could make the walk up Broadway. A lot of bodegas up and down Broadway were bringing people water to drink or fruit or whatever they could, because people were, you know, it was warm, people were walking, it was a long trek, so water was definitely needed, sneakers for the women who couldn't walk, in their you know, their work pumps, um, and that was really heartwarming.

Speaker 1:

But I and but I will tell you one thing that was even more stunning than that was you had hundreds of thousands of people walking up Broadway, but it was silent. They weren't saying it, there was no noise, people weren't talking, they weren't talking, they weren't shouting, there was nothing. They were just walking in silence up Broadway. So it was just hundreds of thousands of people who were basically in shock, heartbroken and in shock. Their city had been in many ways, it had been shattered. Um, so that was, that was the day it was.

Speaker 1:

It was surreal with the f-16s um flying around and my partner at the time worked in connecticut and there was a point where it's like eight o'clock at night and she's trying to get back to our apartment in Inwood and she said I don't know if they're going to let me on Manhattan Island. I don't, I don't know if they're going to let me, they're not letting anyone on, but we're going to take our chances. And I was. I was in the kitchen with a map saying, trying to guide her because there were jams. You know, there were like blocks and jams and it was like an obstacle course driving from New Haven. So, yeah, so she was driving from New Haven into Manhattan and the road was was crazy. Um, she's just trying to make her way home and, um, at one point she's approaching the bridge right, so there's the Broadway bridge just north of our apartment that she would have to cross to get home and there was a chance that they weren't going to let her over the bridge. But what happened? Miraculously, because she still had her scrubs on and a medical ID, they let her through. So it was the scrubs and the medical ID that let them let her through, because they were letting through medical personnel. So she got lucky. She was allowed through. But basically they had the entire island shut down. So she was fortunate in that regard. If it hadn't been for the scrubs and the medical ID, she may not have gotten home that night.

Speaker 1:

In the days and the weeks that followed, one of the things that really stuck in my memory there were so many things was how the air smelled. Those towers smoldered for weeks. It was smoldering for weeks and you could smell it all the way up to the top of Manhattan. It was in the air. We all smelled it and it was something you just couldn't describe. It wasn't a smell any of us had ever smelled before. You really couldn't describe it because it was we would never smell anything like. We never smelled anything like that before and we never would again hopefully ever. It wasn't rotten or anything like that. It wasn't like some awful smell of death, but it was just a smell of things burning that we had never smelled burning before you know it was. It was hard to describe, um, for a lay person. I think somebody who is more familiar with the smell of molting steel and things like that would probably say, oh yeah, that's what that smells like, but, um, we didn't, we didn't know. It was completely foreign to most people.

Speaker 1:

And one of the terrible things that happened was in the weeks that followed was you know the firemen. They had lost so many you know over 200. And they kept going in and searching for the remains, you know, of their fallen brothers and they wanted to keep looking. And at one point, because the city was anxious to get rid of the debris, I guess the city was basically saying you need to stop searching and the firemen were refusing to stop. And at one point the city was actually going to send in the police to arrest the firemen for continuing to dig. And I remember sitting on a bus, on an express bus. I had gone somewhere and I was coming back and I had the newspaper on my lap and I was reading this about how they were going to send. I couldn't believe that these firemen were not going to be able to continue to try to find, you know, their fallen brothers. It was just heartbreaking. It was just heartbreak after heartbreak.

Speaker 1:

Now, one of the things that happened after that is Now. One of the things that happened after that is, you know, throughout New York City you have all these fire escapes on all of the buildings, and one thing that started happening a lot, at least in the areas that I was in is that people started to hang American flags from their fire escapes. American flags from their fire escapes. So New York was just full of American flags from fire escapes. That was really that was kind of fascinating. A lot of candlelight vigils and a lot of walls around the city that had pictures of people who were missing, who hadn't come home, and they were looking for these people. So folks didn't want to believe that these people were dead.

Speaker 1:

Now going back to my story and little Jose in the back of the room who thrust up his hand and said you know my father well, jose, school's open and when Jose returned to school, his father had not come home and he continued to come to school for two or three weeks before the family, you know, realized that the father was not coming home, that in fact he had perished in Building 1. And so that was a tragic story. And I often think of José how, even as he was raising his hand so proudly and telling me his father worked there, his father was already gone. And that's just one of those devastating thoughts. So I often, when I think back at that time, I often think of Jose, and I often send up a little prayer that Jose was able to grow into adulthood with enough of his father, adulthood with enough of his father and the memories of his father and, you know, his father's presence to bring him into adulthood, you know, and into becoming a man. So that's just. It was just really, really heartbreaking.

Speaker 1:

And I will tell you that, within a year, I was, I was making, I was gone, I was, I was moving to Florida. I couldn't stay in that city. A lot of people stayed, but I could not stay in that city. I'm going to just tell you a story about. So listen, after 9-11, if you were somebody who drank, you drank more. If you were somebody who drugged to, if you did recreational drugs to kind of chill out and to de-stress. You did more. So the bars were busy, drug dealers were busy. In all parts of New York People were really, really dealing with their trauma. Now, me I didn't do either. So I didn't drink or do drugs, but I was kind of freaking out too. So what I did was I had had this nightly routine of having a cup of sleepy time tea before going to bed, and it always helped me fall asleep.

Speaker 1:

I went off coffee for two weeks after 9-11. And teachers are famous for carrying around a tumbler and it usually has coffee in it. Well, I walked around with a tumbler that always had two bags of sleepy time tea in it. So I was making very strong sleepy time tea to sip on all day long at school, and I brought a Ziploc bag with more sleepy time tea. So when I was finished with one tumbler, you know, of sleepy time tea, I replenished it with more. So I was literally drinking a double dose of sleepy time tea all day long to get me, to get me through. And it did. It did get me through. That's what got me through. So for two weeks I was just practically overdosing on a sleepy time tea during the day Now, something that would put me to sleep within 15 minutes that night was keeping me together during the day for about two weeks after 9-11.

Speaker 1:

I would have to say that in the years after that, once I got to Florida and I started a new life in Florida, um, and I opened up a cafe in Florida, um, you know, I I will say that had me stay with a person that I shouldn't have stayed with and it literally move away like escape New York with this person who I really shouldn't have been in a relationship with but was because, I think, partly because of the trauma of 9-11. So when I got to Florida and kind of started coming out of that trauma, I was able to release that relationship, I started up a cafe and I started moving my myself out of, like I was healing from this trauma. And of course I'm here. I am in a sunny place, beautiful place, far away from the city, in a quieter place with, you know, with beach and beach sand and palm trees and lots of sun and, you know, getting that serotonin going. And and so I was, I was feeling better and I was in more of a emotional state to be able to take another look at what happened in nine at night, you know, during the time of 911.

Speaker 1:

And by then, in like 2002, 2003, there were some things coming out that were questioning the whole narrative, and one of the things that bothered me right from the first day was Building 7. I mean, how did that happen? That kind of fell perfectly, and I actually remember that interview or that excerpt where you know he said pull it. You know, and I thought that's really odd, how did that happen? And so I questioned it for years, and when I, when I got to Florida and I was able to kind of, you know, kind of come up from you know, that that cloud of trauma and, you know, start having conversations with other people, and, you know, start having conversations with other people, it became clear that there were so many more questions about 9-11 that really needed to be answered. And kind of, the way that Building 7 was not addressed in the 9-11 report sent up a lot of red flags for me, a lot of red flags for me, and I would have to say that 9-11, the trauma of 9-11, was the beginning of a major awakening for me.

Speaker 1:

You know, when people start really waking up, there's usually something. Maybe there's an event that happens or something Like, for instance, covid, really woke up a lot of people. It's like whoa, whoa, whoa. What's going on here? You know, this feels a lot like medical tyranny. What's really going on? And people start waking up to kind of what is going on in our world and how inverted so much of it is. And I think that they started.

Speaker 1:

That started happening for me after 9-11, where I began to really start questioning and when I was enough removed from the actual trauma, then I was able to begin going down some of those rabbit holes. And then someone came into my cafe one day and they said you know, have you seen the zeitgeist movie? Let me show you the zeitgeist movie. And they said why don't we? You know, we can have like a little thing where people can be invited to see the zeitgeist movie and we'll show it here. And I was like, oh, okay, sure, I didn't know that it was going to have such a big impact on me. So we're all watching the Zeitgeist movie at the same time.

Speaker 1:

And my heart sank. It was like, oh no. And in that moment I felt like my heart was being broken again, like it was broken the day when it happened. I was heartbroken, just like every person in New York and many Americans and I was traumatized. So I was traumatized and I was heartbroken and I thought that I had kind of gotten over it. But when I saw that movie and I started going down taking a closer look, I felt like my heart was broken again because I started started realizing that 9-11 may have been an inside job and that our own government may have let it happen. And that's when something big shifted in me, because I had lived through it and now I was living through a level of reality about it that felt like it was taking me up again and I would have to say that that my, my spiritual awakening took off from there.

Speaker 1:

I became a you know, I wanted to really dive deep into um, to spirituality, into um, alternative storylines, timelines about human history, like what else is fake? What else have we been lied to about? I want to know everything. I want to know it all. I'm going down every rabbit hole and, and basically that's kind of what I did. I became a sponge. I wanted to. I wanted to kind of a sponge, I wanted to. I wanted to kind of develop more of my spiritual side, because I felt like I really needed that for strength, and I also wanted to go down every rabbit hole I could find. And you know, and that's and that's what I've done and I've come a long way since then. There are a lot of things that I've discovered along the way, but I don't get up on soapboxes anymore. I kind of just know them quietly or believe them quietly and live my life right and try to do my best and my focus mostly these days is about health and food freedom, keeping ourselves healthy, keeping our bodies healthy. But it's been quite a journey and so much of what propelled me into some of the places that I've gone and some of the ways that my consciousness has expanded over the years, it was 9-11, that 9-11 was a huge catalyst for me and I think it was a huge catalyst for a lot of people you know, in their own, in their own awakening.

Speaker 1:

So I could say so much more, but I think that I've kind of told enough of the story. It's good to share. It's good to share these stories, and again we're coming up on an anniversary, and what we're coming up on too is that there's more and more disclosure about 9-11 itself. There are more and more people saying we need to know the truth about 9-11 and demanding to know the truth about 9-11. That wasn't always true. Even 10 years ago, you really didn't question the narrative, because then you would be called all the usual, all the usual names. And now more and more people are demanding to know the truth about 9-11. And, quite frankly, demanding to know the truth about a lot of things.

Speaker 1:

So, and I'm glad of it, it just makes our world a bit chaotic, doesn't it? Because there's just there's just so much to uncover, and it's messy, it's very messy, but I would like to believe that all of this mess and chaos and disclosure and the emotional responses to the disclosure are going to lead eventually to a better world, to a more truthful world, to a more compassionate world, to, hopefully, a world free of war. That's what I'm hoping. I don't know if I'm going to see it in my lifetime, but I tell you what I'm going to work toward it in any way I can. So thank you so much for listening. This is Patti. Patti talks too much, ciao.