The Night Before

In 2001, they still put phone lines into on-campus apartments. It was just before everyone relied primarily on cell phones and land lines went the way of the dodo bird. That year was my sophomore year at Wingate University and I lived with three other girls in an apartment where we each had a tiny room with shared common areas. We also each had our own land lines, since, like I said earlier, our cell phones were still primarily "for emergencies." We also each had answering machines that were entire separate entities from our phones.

On the night of September 10, 2001, my roommates and I decided to do funny songs on each others' answering machines as the greetings. I did an inspiring version of "Kiss the Girl" from The Little Mermaid on my roommate Natalie's machine. Another roommate, Faith, penned an original rap entitled, "Where Kel? I don't know!" for my machine which finished with the mad beat-box skills of four 20-year-old white girls. Sadly, I don't remember the other two, but we had a great time together and laughed a whole lot. It was what we called a "family night."

We had no idea that the world was about to change forever.