Micaela Blei (@viperpilotkarathrace), author of The Secret Life of Your Third Grade Teacher, says she lived in New York City during the 9/11 attacks. She was a third-grade teacher in downtown Manhattan when the towers fell, and she recalled the aftermath that followed on TikTok.

At 9:30 in the morning, Blei said a French teacher knocked and informed her that they were under attack. Nevertheless, she was told to keep teaching her third-grade class. Blei said, "It was very hard to get information. It was very hard to call out, to let people know that we were okay." Because the cell towers were down, communication in the city became difficult. But as the children were getting picked up, Blei started learning more about the situation.

"It was a very strange feeling in New York at that time, because everyone wanted to do something, and no one knew what we could do," Blei said. It was already Friday, and three days had passed since the incident. Eventually, Blei found out they could go to the Javit Center and sign up to volunteer.

"The line to sign up to volunteer is four avenue blocks long. It goes from the Javit Center on the West Side all the way to the middle of Manhattan," Blei recalled. She and her two friends wanted to volunteer but claimed thousands of people were in line to sign up and help. Blei realized that they most likely wouldn't approve of too many people volunteering, even though they were all at a loss about the tragedy, just like this man who survived 9/11 by a hair's breadth.

Then, Blei said a van pulled up, and a man in a police vest spoke to her and her friends, asking if they wanted to come downtown with him to help. He explained that he just needed people to help but didn't want to go through the bureaucratic channels. Just as Blei was about to refuse, one of her friends agreed to it and reassured her that he'd be with her the whole time.

"The guy explains in the van that he needs someone to organize supplies down at Ground Zero. It's really chaotic down there," Blei recalled. When they reached the site of 9/11, Blei said companies from all over the country were donating truckloads of items that they didn't know what to do with. The donations, she said, included white long-sleeve T-shirts from Donna Karen and cigarettes from Nat Sherman.

"Again, there was no one there to unload them. There was just a truckload of cigarettes sitting close to Ground Zero, supposedly to help the emergency workers," Blei claimed. She explained that the emergency workers needed kits prepared before going on shift and right after they went off shift. They needed grooming items, a change of clothes, and medical items like masks and respirators.

With her friends, Blei went to a small chapel near Ground Zero. There, a supplies booth for emergency workers was set up. A man named Flick, whom she said kayaked all the way from New Jersey to help. Blei said he ran the booth for four straight days. Blei and her friends agreed to organize items, and she claimed that they'd even made a system out of it.

"We started making kits for the workers, and then when an emergency worker would come in to get their stuff, I was sort of like the shop girl," Blei said. Primarily, she helped people get their items and needs. Nevertheless, she couldn't forget the looks on emergency workers' faces before and after shifts.

"People coming on to shift would be really nervous—people coming off of shift just looked haunted, and just smelled terrible and were covered in dust," she reminisced. But Blei leaned into the shop girl role she was assigned, working 20 hours helping people until Saturday morning. The US Army finally came, and Blei said those without a government ID could no longer be at the site.

Blei and her friends said goodbye to Flick and went their separate ways. Despite having worked through a wreck, Blei said she and her friends didn't wear masks the whole time.

"We were covered in dust as well, and we walked through these very quiet, covered-in-dust streets as we headed uptown towards 14th Street," Blei said. She got home, took a shower, and coughed for a couple of weeks. Blei went back to school to teach on Monday, regardless of the tragedy that had unfolded a week before.