[OT] Sep. 11th was the day that I...

When I lived in London, two floors above me there was an american family. They were very nice people. They all took the same plane to visit family in the US... the plane was the PANAM flight that crashed due to a bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland.

That was end of the 80's. Still remember seeing that. Very sad. The anger gives way to sadness and eventually only a bitter taste in the mouth is left.

I hope eventually people get tired of these silly power games.

I was in the courtroom when the judge came in and said that he had just been told that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We checked on a website for 5 minutes, then started the session. It was afternoon here in Switzerland. After that I went home, watched a bit of tv in my sister's appartement - I myself only use my tv for DVDs and my cable connection for the internet - then went gaming as usual.

I saw no need to spend the evening watching tv - give me newspapers for information any day, and it is not as if my presence in front of the tv would have served either me or any victim anyway. And I would not give the terrorists the satisfation of changing my way of life because of their actions.

Tiefling said:

At the time my family was living in a house on a little "farm" (in reality it was about 10 acres of pasture where a couple people boarded horses). I came inside around noon, hot and sweaty, after helping my sister groom her chesnut-colored Morgan-Quarterhorse cross, Wishbone, and sat down on the couch. My grandmother was visiting at the time, and she and my mother were chatting. My mother mentioned to me off-hand that two planes had crashed into the WTC (my brother had called from our other house, which had TV, and told her). I pressed her for details, of which she had few. I was pretty surprised, and I contemplated the possible responsible persons and the political ramifications for a few minutes. I dreaded the inevitable jingoism, bandwagon-patriotism and little American flag bumper stickers that were to come. Then I pretty much went on with my daily life, which in the summer involved vegetating.

Later that evening I got on the Net and filled myself in on everything. I was confused that so many people who were obviously completely removed from danger were so terrified. It seemed that a lot of people had lost their grip on reality. I kinda got to wondering why Americans were so angered by the deaths of 3000 people when most of them hadn't shed a tear to the million+ people who had starved to death in Afghanistan over the past few years, or the thousands upon thousands of people who die each year due to natural disasters in third-world countries.

September 11th was the day that I realized that to most of my countrymen, the lives of people from America are worth more than the lives of others.

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People naturally react more keenly to the deaths of those with whom they feel a common kinship. We don't all attend every funeral of every person who dies, but that doesn't mean we feel those people are unimportant. We simply feel it more strongly when it's family that dies, no matter how far removed. And fellow countrymen are family.

Sorry for the editorializing. EDIT: I'm also taking this discussion off the boards.

I dunno. I understand why you'd have a stronger emotional reaction to the death of someone you know than to the death of someone you've never met. But it seems quite silly to me to have a stronger reaction to the the death of one person whom you've never met than to the death of another such person, even if the former is from the same country while the latter is not.

Tiefling said:

I dunno. I understand why you'd have a stronger emotional reaction to the death of someone you know than to the death of someone you've never met. But it seems quite silly to me to have a stronger reaction to the the death of one person whom you've never met than to the death of another such person, even if the former is from the same country while the latter is not.

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I think you would be surprised by the number of americans who pull together and send good will packages to people who suffer through natural disasters in other countries.

FD

All my friends and family know I have a rule that you don't call me before 10 am or after 10 pm.
I didn't have the news on because I mostly watch for the weather report. It was a nice day so the radio and the TV were off.
I get a phone call just before the second plane hit. My friend tells me that I should quick turn on the TV in a nervous way.
My first thought before I turn on the TV and know what is going on: That India and Pakistan are in a nuclear war.

The rest of the morning I sat and watched the developments. Then at noon, my girlfriend and I went for a walk. She got off of work (an university) early. We talked about how this will change the world.

Peace and smiles

j.

It was one of the first nice days of what passes for fall down here in Houstopolis. The air was dry and clear, the temperature was only in the eighties, and there was an actual northern breeze. It was, that rarest of things here in America's fourth largest city - a pretty day. Funny how that seems important for some reason.

I was at home. Checking my e-mails and puttering around in the quiet time between dropping the kiddo off at day care and going in to work. The phone rang - it was The Missus calling from her office saying that someone had crashed a plane into one of the towers. Being a history geek, I immediately thought of the B25 that hit the Empire State Building in the forties and flipped the TV over to Good Morning America. Initially, it was hard to tell the extent of things because of the camera shot. Was it a private plane? How stupid do you have to be to hit something that big. Couldn't tell.

Then the camera pulled back just in time to track the second plane in.

After a milisecond of wondering if the air traffic controll system for New York was completely down, I realized what I'd just seen. Oddly enough, the next image in my head was straight out of the premiere of "The Lone Gunmen".

When I got my jaw off the floor, I called The Missus and told her it was obviously no accident, it was two ******' airliners, and it looked bad. And then I left for work.

By the time I stopped for gas, the Pentagon had been hit. I tried to call the Missus with an update, but cell traffic was shot, even in Houston.

Just before I got to work, the announcer on NPR said, "One of the towers has fallen." I nearly crashed the car. The notion of such a scope of disaster was beyond my ability to process at that moment. I wish it still were.

I work at a medical clinic, so the waiting room TV was on. Most of the staff were in on time, but no one was working. We were all just watching the rest of it unfold. Another plane down in Pennsylvanian. The Pentagon on fire. Along with the rumors. All planes grounded. Twelve planes still unaccounted for. Local businesses shutting down for the day left and right. We stayed open because our patients needed us, and HIV doesn't care about what happens half a continent away.

I spent the day in a numb haze. I distinctly remember eating lunch at a Vietnamese place I never go to because it's always too busy at lunch time. Not that day.

I finally went home around 3:30. I just couldn't focus on anything. I hugged the kid for what seemed like forever (and probably confused him to no end, since he was only a year and a half old at the time), went upstairs and cried for about an hour, while my wife took the kid over to her folks. I called my Dad, who's the only person I know who remembers Pearl Harbor, just to see if what I was feeling was anything like 1941.

When The Missus got home, she told me her dad's best friend, a crack USAF pilot and former astronaut (really), had been ordered that morning to fly to an airbase in El Paso and assume command of a fighter squadron and await further orders. He's never said anything about it, but we all assume he was part of the fighter escort that took Air Force One to Nebraska and then back to Washington.

At any rate, for about a month, gaming was the last thing on my mind. You see, at the time the first plane going in, I was writing a big, loud, city-shattering superhero setting along the lines of The Authority. The only game I was playing in was a monthly Champions campaign. Suddenly, the thought of knocking down a skyscraper lost all its appeal.

Almost a year on, I still can't look at tall buildings (and Houston has its share) without envisioning planes hitting them. I still remember the eerily silent sky for those days when all flights were grounded, and remember seeing a pair of F16s circling Johnson Space Center, all alone.

Well, that rambled on a bit, didn't it? At any rate, I'm planning on taking the day off from work. I'm not sure why, but I know I won't feel like going in.

Furn_Darkside said:

I think you would be surprised by the number of americans who pull together and send good will packages to people who suffer through natural disasters in other countries.

FD

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I hope so.

Anyway, sorry to editorialize and all. I'll shut up now.

Theron said:

Almost a year on, I still can't look at tall buildings (and Houston has its share) without envisioning planes hitting them. I still remember the eerily silent sky for those days when all flights were grounded, and remember seeing a pair of F16s circling Johnson Space Center, all alone.

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I remember looking up at the sky over Peoria that afternoon and seeing 5 jet trails. No clouds or anything else, just the trails from the four fighters and Air Force One.

I live under the landing pattern for the local international airport. When I was younger, I enjoyed sitting out on Friday nights and watching the planes coming and going as people came in or headed out on the weekends or holidays. So, I'm used to hearing jets go overhead, sometimes fairly low. That morning, I remember hearing a jet go by that seemed louder than usual. Or maybe it just didn't sound right. I didn't think much about it until I found out that the jet that crashed in Pennsylvania had flown over the area I live in. Maybe what I heard was that jet, or maybe it was one of the jets that were being grounded at that time. I don't know. I can't exactly explain it, but it still feels weird to me that I could have seen that plane fly overhead.