I'm proven wrong.
Hmmm....9/27/2015 Just when I think I've figured out how ridiculous everyone is...
I'm proven wrong.
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September 11...9/12/2015 I do this to myself every year. I watch these documentaries every single year. this year I'm watching one I haven't seen before, another one of the home video ones....and I just.... I can't.
Not actually living in New York City, I can remove myself from it all. I was able to do the same thing that Tuesday. But having so many friends that do live there, having attended a university that was roughly 65% students from NYC, the connection was more intense than I ever knew it could be. I didn't know what happened until "aftermath" mode was beginning, at approximately 11 or a little later. I had only two classes that day, an 8am class (philosophy) and 9:30 (US History I, 1400s-1900s), and since both classes were in buildings right near a parking lot, I had a pretty simple routine on Tuesdays. Go to those classes and go home. I didn't go to the Student Union for breakfast or lunch, I barely saw or talked to anyone, save for friends that were in those classes. In fact, I mostly slept through History class, because I KNOW Pre-Industrial Revolution US History. It's getting into the 1900 and the World Wars and all of that where I lose confidence in my knowledge (I can never remember who sided with whom in which war and things like that). One friend, Cory, arrived to History a few minutes late. He didn't even know what all happened, he came to class and said, "Hey, did you hear? There was a bomb at the World Trade Center again." (In our lifetime, there had already been a few) I said. "Oh shit? Again? That sucks." After that, I went to sleep. I realized later that this was probably the time of the Pentagon crash. At 10:50, class ended, and I went home. By that time, Tower 1 and 2 had both collapsed, and the passengers had brought down the plane in PA. And I was oblivious to it all. In hindsight, it was on the way to my car that things seemed off, but in my car that I truly realized something wasn't right. Everyone always had a routine. Even if you didn't talk to them, you passed the same people at the same time of whatever day, you know? I realized once I got to the car that there were several people I did not see. Once I was in the car... no music on the radio. Mostly silence. Tried a few different stations, all of them just talking about WTC being on fire and something about planes. I was flipping stations every few seconds, so not really listening to anything. Finally I settled on my usual station, and this is where it hit me: This was bad. Two of my usual stations (only 1 of them is my usual now, ha. Same guys doing the show too.) have morning talk shows from 6am to 10am. So, at 11, the morning show DJs are done... Yet, every few minutes, I was hearing their voices. Why were they still on the air an hour after their show ended? And why was Janet constantly just repeating "Oh my God" over and over, while Nick kept talking about planes and terrorism? What is happening right now? I got home, I turned on the TV. All I saw was footage of dust. On every channel. I couldn't get an actual coherent story - of course afterwards when you think of the magnitude of it all, I'm amazed that any newscasters and reporters were able to do anything. I would have just stopped and stared. Or ran. Even if I was at a news desk on the opposite side of the country, I'd just be sitting there, dumbfounded. Anyway... I'm flipping from local channels, to CNN, even to MTV (this was the TRL era, and I thought with them being right in the city, they might have something) and that was when I first saw the footage of the collapses. It wasn't until much later in the day that I saw that footage of the actual crashes. Around this same time, they were just figuring out about the downed plane in Shanksville. I remember they kept saying all flights had been grounded except for four. Obviously they knew where three of them were (WTC and the Pentagon, in case you didn't understand where I was going with that) but they had no idea where the fourth one was. Around dinnertime we all watched WTC7 come down, and that was a super powerful moment for a couple reasons: For me, it was just... baffling, because it was the first horrifying event that day that I was seeing live, and I can only imagine how the rest of the country that saw everything else live felt. I can't even begin to imagine how anyone in NYC and even Jersey felt. They REALLY saw it all live. Especially the second plane...The first one.... confusion and shock. But plausible denial - it could have been an accident, right? But that second one? Yeah. Game over. Not an accident. For the country... even though the shock will never wear off for those of us that were old enough to remember it (for the little kids, they might remember, but in distant memory), by evening, because it had been five hours since anything happened (and everything in the morning happened in less than two hours), I think that most people were starting to relax and calm down, as if it was finally over. So to have one more collapse, I was like a kick to an already dead horse. The whole day, even now, nearly a decade and a half later, seems completely surreal. Even though every year, I watch documentaries. Even though I've read the commission report. Even though I've been to Manhattan, both before and several times after, so I can SEE that the skyline has changed, even though the rest of that week, at least half our student population had gone home (many of them with complete strangers - kids with cars had advertised that they were driving home and offering rides, kids who didn't have cars were jumping at the opportunities), there's still this part of me that can't accept that it really happened. Psychics talk about imprints. Physical locations that actually contain the emotions of people that have been there. There's a highway in.... Arizona I think, that was once the site of a horrible Native American slaughter, and when people drive through that stretch, they talk about just randomly experiencing rage, anger, fear... I was at Ground Zero five years and two weeks after the fact, it was still mostly just a hole in the ground, but as I stood at that fence surrounding it... holy shit. Panic. Fear. This overwhelming sense of 'this is it, this is the end.' Confusion. And I know I'm repeating it, but panic. I've never felt panic like that in my life. Never. I imagine this is how our grandparents (and for some of us, our parents) feel about Pearl Harbor. I can remember Pre-9/11 life. It's like a whole different world. |
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