story4869.xml

story4869.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I was working at the time as a shipping and receiving clerk for a small chain of computer stores. I and several coworkers were working in the warehouse area, shooting the breeze and pulling orders at the start of the day. I had CDs playing because our musical tastes were too diverse to agree on any one radio station for very long.

A little after 9 am, I believe it was, our delivery driver walked in looking a little stunned, and announced that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. We were all very surprised, and I wondered whether it had been some awful accident or maybe a despondent pilot deciding to end it all. But really, with so much to do, it was only a momentary curiosity, and soon we were back to work.

The driver walked in a second time, and said that *another* plane had hit the Towers. The warehouse manager immediately said it was some sort of act of terrorism, that this was no accident. And for it to have happened twice---I found myself agreeing with her. We finally turned on the radio, and shaken deejays were reporting this latest news, and in a few minutes, someone from up front where the offices were told us the company president had turned on the television in the conference room, and that we were free to watch. He was not a man to do such a thing lightly, and I knew it was worse than any of us had imagined.

So we all went to the conference room, and just stared in shock at the smoke billowing out of the Twin Towers, and the endless replays of the planes hitting them, then the Pentagon footage, which we hadn't even been aware of, and ultimately, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. We were all standing there still when the Towers began to fall, and what had been shock and disbelief transformed into grief and horror. Many people walked out then, unable to bear any more; but after a while they'd come back, needing to bear witness to history, compelled to watch their world change before their eyes.

The day took on a surreal quality. Nobody left to go home for the day, but suddenly selling computers didn't seem quite so important. Some people sat in shock and sadness, overwhelmed by what they'd seen. Others threw wild speculations back and forth, wanting to know *how* this thing could have happened. It wasn't until later that it all started to make some sort of sense, and a whole nation rose in anger; in those first hours it was quiet, individual, overwhelming, and we were all doing all we could just to cope.

When I finally went home for the day, I watched the news footage over and over; I downloaded video clips of angles not shown on television. I looked at photos and clips of the Towers as they had been, and the wounded landscape that was now reality. I couldn't take in the fact that something that had been a part of my life for so long was just---gone. And made gone not by some bizarre doing of our own but by the worst kind of terrorism. Gone, along with most of the people inside, and everyone in every one of those planes used to bring about its destruction. I couldn't comprehend it. Rich, poor, famous, ordinary, male, female, gay, straight, white, black---everybody, all dead, indiscriminately, just because someone objected to the way we do things. I finally fell asleep that night drained, soul weary, feeling a national vulnerability I'd never felt before, and suddenly acutely aware of America's place on the world stage.

It's better now. I'm not afraid of some other random attack on those I love. We had, for a while, a fierce national pride; and while that has banked a bit over the last year, it's not gone, and is far higher than it was 366 days ago. And while I do take issue with some of our policy, I revel in the fact that I *can* take issue with it; and I can say, still, that I'm proud to be an American.