story4293.xml

story4293.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I work in a large retail enviroment and one of our employees that had the day off, came into the store to let us know what happened. I believed that there had been a plane accident, but he had to be wrong about it being intentional. I immediately called my father to inform him of the accident because my little sister lives in New York City. He already knew and said that was indeed an attack. He's been trying to reach my sister, but couldn't get through on the phone. My mother teaches sixth grade and according my father much calmer about the situation even though she didn't have the luxery of trying to call her daughter every five minutes. Within a couple of hours my sister called to say she and her boyfriend were fine.

Our store is rather large, 114(k) square feet, so we set radios up in four different locations of the store. No matter what part of the building you worked in a person could get to a radio. Our manager on duty, who has always been focused on work when present, just lapped the store going to the different radios. He had served in the military and said, "This is reason to nuke somebody." It was at that point I became afraid. An hour hadn't even past yet and people wanted to start a nuclear war! We knew so little a that time and I was scared to death about our future not the present. We sent everyone home we could afford to and ran with a minimal crew. More than anything we wanted to see it, not just hear it.

When you were a child it was what you heard and couldn't see that terrified you in the night. Your parents would come to your room because they heard you crying and they'd turn the lights on in your room. They'd show you everything that made those noises, those scary sounds. And once they explained it all away, you felt safe again. I wanted to see for myself, an adult, and unveil the truth. It was an accident, other people just weren't observent enough to see the signs. I, ofcourse, would be able see that this was truly a very tragic accident, if I could only get to a television.

I got off about 6:00 that evening and went straight to my parent's house. Once again I, a woman of 30, sought their assurance that there was no need to be scared. When they had no such rational explanation it was because they were just absorbed with worry for my sister's safety. I went into the television room and saw rerun after rerun of the planes hitting the towers.

There was a true, living, breathing monster in my room and seeing it made me realize no one was protecting me anymore.