Jay Nyandak: I was a child at 9/11. I survived and so did my mother, thanks to fate

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my biggest problem was a permission slip.

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I was 12 years old and in Grade 7 at PS 89 in Tribeca, about a block from the World Trade Center. My class was supposed to go on a field trip to the Bronx Zoo that morning. When my humanities teacher, Mrs. Garvey, asked everyone to bring their signed permission slips to the front of the classroom, my stomach sank.

I had forgotten to get my mother’s signature.

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I asked to be excused and went downstairs to the school office to call her. My mother, a single parent, worked for American Express at 3 World Financial Center, directly across from the World Trade Center.

I asked her to come over and sign my permission slip. She said she would.

What I didn’t know was that my mother had been heading toward the underground shopping complex beneath the World Trade Center to run an errand before work. My call brought her back toward my school. By the time she left, she decided to skip the errand and head directly to her office at American Express.

On the way, she noticed an airplane flying alarmingly low over Lower Manhattan. She wondered whether a movie was being filmed.

Then she watched it strike one of the Twin Towers.

She initially thought she had witnessed some kind of movie stunt or a horrific accident. Then she saw a second plane strike the other tower and realized it wasn’t an accident.

Inside my classroom, we didn’t know what had happened. I remember the room shaking and pencils falling from desks. I thought perhaps one of the custodians had dropped a heavy cleaning cart on the floor above us.

Then we felt another violent shake.

Our classroom windows faced Stuyvesant High School, so we couldn’t see the World Trade Center. Eventually an announcement came over the PA system. As I remember it, we were told there had been a “minor accident” at the World Trade Center. Teachers were instructed to take us downstairs to the cafeteria to be picked up by our parents.

I didn’t go directly to the cafeteria.

I was a curious 12-year-old who needed to know what was happening. I slipped away and took another staircase toward the schoolyard.

What I saw outside has remained with me for 25 years.

Manhattan had stopped moving.

Growing up in New York, I had never seen anything like it. People were standing motionless on the sidewalk, staring upward. For a moment, my 12-year-old mind couldn’t make sense of what could cause an entire street of New Yorkers to stop at once. I remember wondering if there had been some kind of alien landing.

Then I followed their eyes.

I saw the World Trade Center burning.

Smoke poured from the tower. Tiny objects appeared to be falling from high above. At that age, I assumed I was watching debris. Only later did I understand that some of what I saw may not have been debris at all.

I returned to the cafeteria. One of my classmates was crying because she, too, had someone close to her who worked at the World Trade Center.

I didn’t know where my mother was.

There were no smartphones showing someone’s location on a map. I couldn’t text her and ask if she was safe. I could only wait.

Eventually, she appeared. She hugged me, and we left.

Outside, my mother encountered a colleague who had also made it out. They stopped to talk. I don’t remember much of their conversation, but I remember becoming anxious.

I tugged on my mother’s coat and told her we needed to leave.

Not long afterward, I watched one of the towers collapse.

Then we ran.

We fled north through Lower Manhattan with thousands of others. The subways downtown were inaccessible, and returning home to Brooklyn wasn’t an option. Eventually, we reached Midtown and stayed with one of my mother’s friends.

We were extraordinarily fortunate. My mother survived. I survived.

For 25 years, I have occasionally wondered about that unsigned permission slip.

Had I remembered to get my mother’s signature the night before, I would never have needed to call her from school that morning. She might have continued with her errand beneath the World Trade Center instead of turning back toward me.

I will never know whether, by forgetting that permission slip, I inadvertently saved my mother’s life.

I only know that forgetting it changed where my mother was that morning.

Others around us were not so fortunate.

My Grade 6 social studies teacher, Mr. Lee, was one of the people who made history fascinating to me. I remember him telling our class that his brother had been killed aboard one of the hijacked aircraft.

After September 11, I remember seeing the effect that loss had on him. The energetic teacher I had known seemed changed.

That morning didn’t end for us when the smoke cleared. My school was displaced. My mother’s workplace at 3 World Financial Center was damaged, and her job was temporarily relocated to New Jersey.

I was a child. I didn’t have the vocabulary to understand everything I had witnessed.

I do now.

That is why, 25 years later and now living in Toronto, I was stunned to read reports that internal CBC guidance instructed its journalists not to independently describe September 11 as a “terrorist attack.”

CBC has since changed that guidance, allowing its journalists to directly describe September 11 as a terrorist attack. That was the right decision.

Twenty-five years later, September 11 is increasingly history rather than living memory. Millions of adults today weren’t alive when the towers fell. For them, what happened that morning will increasingly be something they learn about rather than remember.

The words we use to describe it matter.

Nineteen al-Qaida hijackers seized four civilian airliners in a co-ordinated attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The words we use to describe it matter. ... It was a terrorist attack.

The terror wasn’t an incidental consequence. It was the point.

I remember the classroom shaking and pencils falling.

I remember being told there had been an accident.

I remember walking into the schoolyard and seeing Manhattan standing still.

I remember looking up.

I remember waiting for my mother.

I remember tugging on her coat.

I remember watching a tower collapse.

And I remember running.

Twenty-five years later, we should be able to examine the history and consequences of September 11 without losing sight of the simplest truth about what happened that morning.

It was a terrorist attack.

I was 12 years old.

I was there.

Jay Nyandak is a University of Toronto graduate and an IT Systems Administrator in Toronto who grew up in New York City.

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