I was annoyed.

I don’t normally listen to the radio or watch television when I wake up. I just have a buzzer alarm. Get up, get ready, get to work. It’s a Tuesday, and like most Tuesdays I don’t have to be at work until 9, so I grab an extra hour of sleep. I turn on the car radio and the CD player starts, like it usually does in the morning for no reason I can tell. I play one song then turn it off, hoping to find something worth listening to.

And I get annoyed, because someone is talking. Changed the station, someone still talking. Do it again, more talk. Weird, those aren’t the usual morning idiots. They’re talking about fire at the World Trade Center. I think, “It must be the anniversary of the bombing.” Then they say a plane has hit a building, and I think, “You mean, like a Cessna. I heard about that sort of thing happening. I hope it isn’t too bad.”

Then he says that this morning, a passenger jet hit one of the towers. And then, at some time later, another jet hit the the other. “Terrorism is suspected.”

Then, and this is the part I remember most clearly, the anchor is talking to someone on the phone, from Washington. And the guy on the phone says, “I was looking out the window, towards the Pentagon, and I just saw a plane go down. I think a plane has hit the Pentagon.”

…

I get to work, and I say, “Did you hear what happened?” to everyone. Of course they did. They got the little TV set up in the boss’ office and they’re looking at the news. Both buildings are on fire. And then they played the clip of the second plane hitting.

I go to the Internet, and of course all the big news sites are clogged. But I get the details.

There are rumors all around, and the news people on the radio and TV are reporting them. There are four planes still missing. They say a plane went down in a field in Pennsylvania, and I say, “It must be a coincidence. Why would terrorists crash a plane in a field in Pennsylvania?” Terrorists wouldn’t, of course. It would be days before we were sure what happened.

I go to work in my little room, and I play music, because I can’t take it any more. After an hour or so, I step outside and try to get an update. And the TV is playing more footage. I can’t tell what’s going on, and somebody tells me that the towers have come down.

…

The reporters are saying we should stay off the long distance lines except for emergencies. I’m lucky, nobody I knew was in the WTC or the Pentagon, nobody happened to be flying in the Northeast. I know some people in Washington. Rationally, I know they wouldn’t have been in any danger, but I’m not thinking very rationally. My stepmother is in Florida, but she flies a lot. I hope she’s okay, and didn’t get trapped in an airport somewhere.

Email is working, so I send out some mail. And I can’t take the news, but I can’t not listen any more. I think, “Osama bin Laden probably did this,” and the news people are saying that he’s the prime suspect. But then I keep thinking. Maybe it was drugs, maybe Colombians were involved. Or Palestinians. Someone says the Palestinian Liberation Front claimed responsibility. Whoever did this, I know they’re going to pay for it.

…

People say that things would never be normal again. I know that’s foolish. Eventually, there will be “normal”. Maybe it won’t be the same normal we had before, but we’ll adjust. People are good at that. But we won’t forget.


Taken at a ceremony for the victims of the USS Cole bombing, October of 2000.