I’m sure today will be full of retrospectives and whatnot that I’m going to avoid like th plague. Yes, the 10 anniversary of the worst attack on US soil is a big deal, but something about how the media will be portraying it feels cheap and trite. I’d rather speak about my experience that day ten years ago.
9/11/2001 – It was a typical Tuesday morning my senior year of college. My first class started at 11:30 AM, so I would swing by the University gym around 8 AM to start my day. Now usually the local college radio station Z-89 is blaring music in the gym, which was background noise to me but had a few good tunes or two at times. But today as I was about a third of the way through my workout, it caught my ear that they hadn’t really played any music for about 20 minutes or so. I was in between sets so I stopped to actually listen this time. I heard “This is ABC NEws” and immediately knew something was amiss. THey they talk about what happened. Planes flying into the WTC Towers. It shocked me, but because I wasn’;t seeing this unfold it didn’t fully sink in.
So I finished my workout and headed back to my apartment. As I did, I was passing by friends and classmates, exchanging comments of surprise and sadness about what happened. But then I ran into one girl who had not heard a lick about the WTC tragedy yet, and even worse both her parents worked in the towers. Not only did I feel like a first-class asshole, that’s when the magnitude of what happened really struck home. (On a side note, both this girl’s parents thankfully ended up fine and unharmed.)
The first thing I did was turn on the TV and of course, the first thing I saw was the pillars of smoke billowing out of one tower. I actually didn’t even know one of the towers had collapsed because there was so much smoke. And then they replayed the first tower collapsing. And shortly after, the second tower came down.
I was gutted, sickened and grossed out at the same time. I got calls from various family members that morning and we exchanged words of comfort and support. And one of my roommates gave my me first laugh with his inappropriate but very apt AIM away message (yes, remember how that was the social network before MySpace or FB?)
Later that day the campus was awash with a sort of subdued chaos and panic as many frantic students tried getting in touch with family members and other friends. But unfortunately, the cell towers were overloaded and nothing got through. The rest of the day was a bit of a blur as more information came in. Some of it good (a number of classmates with family at the WTC had nothing to worry about). And of course some bad (a few other classmates were not so lucky in that regard).
I think the one thing I learned from such a tragedy is to honor the fallen by living. And by living I mean not being a stranger in one’s life. Because I think we can agree that tomorrow is not promised.
Leave a Reply