story88.xml

story88.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-02-26

I work a late schedule, so I was still at home that morning, getting ready for work. One of my housemates was watching tv around 9:30am and he called me into the den. The first image I saw was both towers on fire, pouring smoke into the sky. Time seemed to stand still for a minute as my brain tried make sense of what I was seeing. I thought, "they struck again", meaning the terrorists had again attacked the Trade Center. I assumed that it was like the first attack back in 1993(?), with a car bomb in the underground garage. It was a minute or so before the tv reran the planes hitting. I was in shock. This can't be happening. I was immediately glued to the tv for the rest of the day and saw all the other things as they happened--the towers collapsing, the Pentagon, the other plane crash, the fear of other hi-jacked planes. The whole county seemed in chaos as Bush and Cheney were whisked off to secret and secure places. I called my office at Georgia Tech in downtown Atlanta around 11am to say that I probably would not come in because the local news said that traffic was chaotic with people fleeing the city. They said that Georgia Tech was being "evacuated" by order of the governor. Then, on the local news, they were listing all the downtown Atlanta buildings that were closing for fear of another plane attack. It was just unbelievable. I kept thinking about Pearl Harbor and how similar it seemed. I stayed up after midnight watching tv. Only the Hispanic cable channel showed the most horrific scenes: the video of people jumping from the burning towers. One body after another tumbing all the way down to the sidewalk. It was nightmarish. The entire day was a life-changing event. It made so many things seem so trivial and frivolous. Some cable channels had yet to take off their insipid infomercials, so it was bizarre to switch from CNN coverage of the carnage to a 30 minute program hawking Victoria Principal skin moisturizers, QVC jewelry, or chicken rotisseries. I'm 34 and consider most of my generation to be lost in a daze of consumerism, materialism, and pop culture amusements. I hope that Sept. 11 made some people reexamine their priorities.