story8916.xml

story8916.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-01-04

I came to work that Tuesday morning later than the others in the office. As I sat down at my desk, my co-worker Tim walked up and began to tell a group of us how his wife called him and told him a plane had hit one of the towers. I thought it was odd news, but was not shocked b/c I didn't understand the magnitude of the event (didn't know size of the plane, didn't see pictures of smoke billowing out of the tower). Then Tim says, "and you won't believe this", his wife was watching the live news while talking to him on the phone, and told him as a 2nd plane was hitting the other tower! Maybe two seconds passed before all of us in the office got over our surprise and voiced the understanding that this had to be an intentional terrorist act.
The funny thing was that Tim said this with a kind of bemused grin on his face. And I grinned back at him this way. It was the kind of grin you put on when an extraordinary event occurs that you just can't believe. At that moment, we didn't have a TV so none of us in the office had seen pictures of it, we didn't think much of the resulting fire, and didn't know how large the planes were. We just didn't fully realize that hundreds of people had just been slaughtered. Then the group started to theorize about what would happen. Somebody pointed out that there would be a fire and it would probably trap everybody above the point of collision.
Slowly, as we thought about it more and got more details, we came to the realization of just how huge an attack this was, and how many people may have died and may still die. From this point on, not much work got done. Myself and the other computer-savvy folks started scouring the Internet for news information. Practically all of the news pages were unavailable since they were being flooded with requests. Finally one of us found a small local news page that was slow but accessible. Then we saw pictures of the smoking towers.
I started calling friends and getting calls from friends--email just didn't seem to be an intimate enough forum for discussing the matter. I wanted to connect with people I knew, to hear their voice. One of my friends called, saying in depressed shock, "Can you believe what's going on?" He was at home watching TV. Then he said to me, expressing a very sad, resigned, and desperate feeling, "oh god it just fell." But I didn't appreciate what he was saying. I just assumed that maybe a top part of one of the towers had fallen off. I didn't fathom that the whole thing could collapse. I wouldn't find that out until a few hours later.
At lunchtime, one of the head management told us he was heading home for a long lunch, which he doesn't normally do. We all understood that he was going home to be with his family.
So I called my girlfriend and asked her to come home for lunch with me. People just wanted to be with those they love that day. (Probably even at that very early point most people had already started having their life's priorities rearranged--started to understand with greater clarity than most of us ever had before what's most important in life.) I will never forget sitting on the couch next to her, turning on the news, and first seeing a replay of the 2nd plane hitting. As that fireball flew out from the building, I felt that awful feeling knowing that hundreds of people had just instantly loss their lives by the deliberate act of some other. My girlfriend and I let out small gasps of shock and then sat there silent for a long time, watching the news coverage, holding each other. The emotional impact and magnitude of the event had finally settled in.
When I saw that collision and fireball, 5% of me marvelled at how it was like an action movie. 90% of me felt that deep, monolithic and appropriate feeling of horror and grief for those who died. This was a feeling I'd never had before; it must be the kind of thing a soldier experiences on the battlefield. And the other 5% of me pondered how I--someone who'd grown up watching action movies and playing video games and had always revelled in the fake war and death so prevalent in our entertainment culture--experienced a reaction entirely different from when I watched those movies. And I was glad that this horrible event had exposed so clearly and definitively my true humanity, which is so often obscured in the entertainment-centric nature of our everyday lives.
I was shocked when I saw replays of the towers collapsing. I didn't think that was possible. I just never considered the physics involved. When my friend had mentioned it earlier, I had assumed that the top part might have come off and slid off the top. Watching the thing crumble to dust gave me such a deadening feeling in the pit of my stomache. I felt like I couldn't properly feel the depth of emotion that was relevant to this event. I felt like there weren't any emotions that could reflect the depth of horror seen in those images.
In the days following, my life changed, as so many others. I saw things in a different light. My priorities in life were rearranged for the better. My pride in my country was reawakened. And, above all, I stopped taking things for granted. My feeling in the days and weeks after the event was one of grief, confusion, but also pride. I didn't feel much anger; I felt something much stronger than that. I felt a steely resolve and grim sense of determination.
One other change I've noticed in myself and others since 9/11 is a greater desire to understand the world. I read the international news with a passion now. And I know others who now, despite never having watched the news for anything before, keep tabs on the latest headlines. Because of Americans' reaction to 9/11, I'm optimistic for the future of my country. And I'm optimistic for the future of the world.