story9083.xml

story9083.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-02-21

I was recovering from surgery and waiting for a new job to start, so slept late, until 9 am. After getting up, I got breakfast and wandered out to the TV around 10. I was watching a rerun of ER on TNT (or TBS, whichever one shows those) when the phone rang. It was my Dad, calling from work and he asked if I had the TV on. I said I did, but all the cable feeds were still on daily programming, I guess they didn't switch over to news feeds until later.

I changed to CNN at my Dad's prompting, and then he had to go back to work. At first, I just stared. There was only one tower. That can't be. The other one must be hidden in all the choking smoke covering lower Manhattan. The clips from the collisions were rebroadcast on CNN, and I saw the whole history of the four planes, and the collapse of the first tower. Stunned, I sat, never suffering from the disbelief that others talk about. I *knew* it was real. It wouldn't be on CNN if it wasn't, and if by any chance it was a clip from a movie, it would state so. Movies also don't do smaller scale destruction like one building, it will be like Independence Day, with whole cities being destroyed. This had to be real.

And then I saw the second tower fall, live. I still can picture it as clear as day, in the strongest flashbulb memory I have created so far in my life; the antenna of the North Tower sinking slowly into the disintegrating building as smoke rose to cover the hole where the Twin Towers had once been. I burst into tears, thinking "My God, there must be thousands dead," and frantically racking my brain to find anyone who I knew who might have been working there that day. My sister called, and said that they were evacuating buildings in Los Angeles where she lives, and she was going home. I watched the rebroadcasts of the events of the day on CNN again, then shut off the TV.

I knew they would know nothing for days, even weeks, until the situation could be assessed, and drove to the Best Buy on Rt. 10 in Livingston. The store had closed, so I drove to meet my parents where they taught at Livingston High School and spent the rest of the day there with them.

Thankfully, no one I knew or any friends of friends were killed. We are too young still, just starting our first jobs, to work in large numbers at the WTC. Sixteen people from my town were killed, however, since we live on the Gladstone-Peapack branch of the trains.

The personal impact has been great despite my personal distance from the victims. I don't have the safety concerns many others do. I don't buy gas masks or duct tape in the vain hope that it will save me if something does happen, death would usually come too quickly to prepare. But I do have a deep, abiding sadness about what humans are capable of in the name of religion, or nationalism. Wars can be necessary; I am no pacifist, but hatred and violence without negotiation and compromise only leads to extremism and dangerous fanatics such as the suicide bombers. I don't know what will happen, anymore then I knew what would happen on September 11, 2001 when I woke up to a beautiful autumn day, but I will never forget what has happened, and hope that something as senseless will stop occuring anywhere in the world.