story9301.xml

story9301.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-05-08

I woke up on 9/11 and lounged in bed. I didn't want to get up. Finally, I turned on the tv, more out of habit than anything. The volume was very low and I paid it no attention. I remember the ABC "Good Morning America" host Diane Sawyer was interviewing somebody and it seemed very dull. I took a quick shower and got dressed. As I was putting on my socks, I looked up and saw the 1st tower with smoke billowing out of it. I thought that they were doing a piece on the last World Trade Center attack, so I continued with my socks. But I started thinking to myself that it didn't look right. During the bombing a decade ago, there was no big hole in the top of the building. So I turned up the volume and gleened from the conversation that a plane had struck the tower. Within seconds I saw something dark flash into view on the right side of the screen. It became all too evident what it was when a fireball exploded out of the left side of the 2nd tower. I couldn't believe my eyes. I called my boss and asked if he had his tv on. He said that he was already on his way to work but was listening to coverage on his radio. When I made it to work, everything was chaos. We left the office (only a 3 person office) and went to the leasing office to watch CNN on the tv there. We saw both towers collapse. The owner called from California to tell us to close down for the day since no one was going to get any work done anyway. I sat in front of the tv the rest of the day with my eyes glued to the screen. That night as I was driving to job #2 down the freeway, I kept looking at the sky because I thought how surreal it was not to see any planes up there. After a couple of weeks of solid news on virtually all channels, I turned on the tv one night and instead of news it was "Third Rock From The Sun," a rerun. I laughed so hard that I cried. It was like all that bitterness and fear had bottled up inside of me and it all came out when I dared to laugh again. What a rollercoaster ride.