9/11 Story

So with the 10 year anniversary of September 11th upon us, I thought that it might be time to write down my 9/11 story.

During this time I was living out at our family's ranch and going back to school.  A good friend of mine was living with us at the time and we shared my room.  I was dating a beautiful young woman that had just started college away from us as well.  That is about all the set up to my life at this time.

I used to wake up early and this morning was no different.  My mother was in the kitchen cooking something for breakfast that morning.  When I entered the front room, I saw the TV with the news on, which was normal for this early in the morning.  That was when I saw something strange on the television...

This was early, after the planes had hit, but before anything else really happened.  I saw the Twin Towers on fire, tons of smoke, and just that overall feeling on the news when it is a breaking story.  I asked "Uh...what is going on here?" to which my mother replied with what knowledge we all had, that some planes had crashed into the towers.

I was immediately intrigued as to how this could happen, let alone to both towers.  I quickly realized that it must have been something planned by someone maliciously.  It was the only real explanation.  Shortly afterward, the first tower fell.  That was the moment I knew that this was more than some freak event.  This was huge.  This was something that was calculated and executed and is not only going to caused many deaths and pains, but completely change the world.  It was sickening and beautiful in a weird way.

It did not take long after that for my phone to ring down the hall.  This was before I had a cell phone and just kept my landline as long as possible.  I ran down the hall to find out it was one of my other good friends.  It was not like him to be up this early.  He just said "Hey man, have you seen this shit?"

Of course...it was good of him to call.  He needed his friends as the world had started changing in front of him.  He wanted to make sure we were both up and experiencing this with him.  I said yes and he said that there was no way he was going to school today to which I agreed and told him to come over.  I got my other buddy up, the one that was sharing my room with me, and told him come out and see what is going on.  For the next many hours, we were glued to the TV.

See, I live on the west coast.  We don't really know many people back east and the ones that we do were nowhere around NYC, so the TV was our only connection other than the direct human one.  This was where it was happening for us.

It took a little bit, but my buddy that had called before called once more and asked if wanted anything to eat.  He picked up some McDonald's breakfast sandwiches and finally made it over.  Was not long after that when the reports of the 4th plane missing along with the reports of the Pentagon were all coming on. 

The second tower collapsed.  All we could do was watch and listen to Peter Jennings on the TV.  The various camera angles, the sounds, the smoke and debris....was very overwhelming.  Never in my life before or since have I felt what I felt on that day.  I know it is silly, but looking back the best way to describe what I was feeling was like what Obi Wan felt when the Death Star blew up Alderaan.  It was like an entire city crying out, loud and fierce, then nothing.

We speculated on who and how this could have been done.  One of my buddies sworn that it was Qaddafi.  I just could not even speculate.  I assumed some kind of terror attack, but as to whom would do this and why, it was unfathomable to me at the time.  I was thinking that is was home grown though at the time. 

This lasted all morning.  We just sat and talked.

That evening I had to go to work.  During this time I was a manager at Pizza Hut.  Once getting there we had our TVs on the news, a few customers, but overall not much action all evening.  There was one man that I worked with that I want to talk to.  He was an old man, one of my part time drivers, and a very patriotic veteran.  He was an interesting man who's opinion I greatly respected even though we did not always agree on things.  He was quiet and watching with us.  Later I found him and asked him what he thought.  Like a true gentleman, he did not have much to say.  It is amazing to see his emotion through the lack of emotion he had shown, if that makes sense. 

The next day I went to school early to hang out a bit and see people.  It was a somber, solemn day and most of my classes were cancelled again.  We used to all hang out behind the campus theater because there was a large dock there that was a great meeting place.  I sat, and talked to many people as they came throughout the day.  There were various opinions and thoughts, not all I wanted to hear or had much respect for.  A long-time friend came to me and said he needed to talk to someone.  We walked a bit away and he was just confused and lost, did not know what to think.  Finally he asked me what I thought...

This was really the first time that I had some chance to really digest and reflect on my own thoughts.  In doing so, I was the first of my friends or anyone in my group to say that I was amazed and the organization and power people can exert if they feel the need to.  I could not believe that someone could believe so deeply in a cause to do such a horrific act, murder thousands of people, and maliciously tear the heart out of a city.  I speculated about the will power involved and the pain caused, even thought about the idea of some kind of metric to study emotional pain.  The direct human pain was still unknown to me.  I had not felt it in that way yet.

We discussed various ideas and thoughts, there were fears and tears abound.

It was not until many months later that I saw something on TV about the event that I really connected to it on a direct level.  This was later, once all the videos and whatnot were coming out with more human stories of that day.  I connect with stories deeply.  Seeing some of those documentaries hit me and for the first time I cried about what happened.  I finally saw people directly affected, people that were there, and stories of how that day changed the lives of millions of people in a very real way.

It did not take me long to protest even the idea of going to war.  I joined groups in college along with occasionally heading out to a group who would hold peace signed on a busy corner every once a week.  I joined a peace protest with a friend where people were reading poetry, or just talking to try to promote the idea of stopping the violence before it started.  It was of course futile, but the journey itself is sometimes just as important as the outcome. 

At that event one of the professors at the college stepped up to the podium.  He talked a bit about himself as a Vietnam war vet, a bit about his experiences, and then took out a letter to read.  This was a letter that was sent from a buddy in the war back home just days before he was killed in an unjust war.  It was a few pages and by far one of the most emotional things I had ever heard.  The crowd were all crying, the teacher was in tears just trying to finish the letter.  He knew first hand the results of unjustified violence as a scar on our collective consciousnesses.  He knew that the outcome was nothing but more death and the later pain caused by empty revenge.  That revenge is what we still have ongoing today.

I don't want to get political anymore.  The political events post 9/11 are a story all unto themselves.  As for my own fallout, I still have trouble watching the events and thinking about them, but I cannot look away when anything is on about 9/11.  It is like seeing someone die, you can't look away but looking just rips you apart from your humanity in a weird way.

That is all I want to say about 9/11 today.  This has not very well edited, so there are probably typos and bad sentences abound.  I apologize for that, but I just want to finish typing on the subject for tonight.  I want to just say that I wish I could hug every living victim of that event.  I could not imagine their pain.  I want to shake the hand of every volunteer that gave their time, their money, and in some cases their health to try to save anyone left in the rubble.  I commend you.  This was a dark time for our country, but a strong point for us as human beings.