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

I was at work when we heard the news about the murders. I spent the morning glued to the radio for updates, I used a month's worth of minutes on my cell phone consoling my hysterical wife, and I nearly got into a fistfight with a thoughtless* co-worker.

I was shocked and angry at the time; shocked and angry at the scope of the crimes and the tragic deaths of so many of my innocent countrymen.

I'm no longer shocked, but I'm still as angry as I was as year ago.

Maybe angrier.

*Edit: No need to get into specifics.

I know people personally who have been to ground zero, gone downtown even months afterward.

I don't think they went in a morbid way, nor to stare like at a road accident. They went to say goodbye to a place. It was done out of grief, for the fallen towers, and the fallen men and women who lost their lives down there. It makes it all that more real for them, easier to accept, actually having been there. SOme folks need to be there to say goodbye. My friend who had moved to california only 4 months before 9/11 - came to NJ for CHristmas. He went to see it - not out of morbid curiosity - but t make it REAL. For most people, it's no more real then a movie, seeing it on TV, on the internet. But when you're there, it's real. And when you've been there before it happened, and see what it is now, you can grieve for it.

I personally have no desire to go down there. I know the reality of the situation. Most of us in the NY metro area have lived with it day in and out. But, I'm sure that at some point, in my frequent trips to NYC, I will end up downtown walking by it.

I'm also glad to hear about others taking trips to enjoy NYC despite what has happened. A lot of folks feared NYC before this happened - feared it because they thought it had too much crime, was unsafe, etc... This kind of thing could instill more fear.

I can tell you this - I feel safer now then I ever did. When I drive through the Lincoln tunnel, and go up the ramp to park at port authority, and the PA police ask to see my driver's license, write down my name and driver's license # and open the trunk of my car to check it - I KNOW that NYC is safe.

I hope more folks come to visit. It is one of the greatest cities in the world. And my favorite.

--*Rob

Morrus said:

My reaction, from the UK, was a little different.

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That was something I forgot to mention. I just don't know if anyone has told you, Morrus, how grateful we all were for the support the UK showed. I have absolutely no idea how Blair is viewed in your country, but he certainly seemed very sincere in his support. Many, many countries lent their support in the aftermath and we all remember that.

WayneLigon said:

That was something I forgot to mention. I just don't know if anyone has told you, Morrus, how grateful we all were for the support the UK showed. I have absolutely no idea how Blair is viewed in your country, but he certainly seemed very sincere in his support. Many, many countries lent their support in the aftermath and we all remember that.

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This is something I'm glad you brought up. I also want to say that Blair was a comfort during that time, and really exuded an aura of determination and friendship. So, too, the British people. I looked to Blair and what he said and did as much as I did with our own leaders.

WayneLigon said:

That was something I forgot to mention. I just don't know if anyone has told you, Morrus, how grateful we all were for the support the UK showed. I have absolutely no idea how Blair is viewed in your country, but he certainly seemed very sincere in his support. Many, many countries lent their support in the aftermath and we all remember that.

Click to expand...

Well, despite the fact that we make jokes about Americans continually, I think the British people as a whole pretty much regard you guys as friends (unlike the French! Poo! ). We're all so interconnected these days anyway, especially with mass media and the internet. We share the same history to a large extent.

Airport Security

If evidence was ever needed against relaxing security measures at airports, its what happened yesterday at Stockholm airport.

It just makes me shudder to think about what that guy may have been planning.

Apologies if the therad has moved away from the "Where were you when..." topic, but I'm just now seeing this, and I wanted to toss in.

I was driving to work at the time. I work for a national video gaming publication, located in California, so we're on Pacific time. I was listening to Howard Stern as I droove to work, and Howard is always on a 3-hour recorded delay each day, so we don't have to get up at 3am to hear his show.

He and his folks were talking about how he made out with Pamela Lee at a club, or something equally inane. Then Gary Dellabate came in and said someone crashed into the WTC.

Now, the fact that a highway sign had announced that all flights from SFO (San Francisco Int'l Airport) were cancelled didn't make me think of anything. I saw it and figured, "Heh, SFO sucks, it always has."

As the Stern show progressed, everyone thought it was some drunken pilot crashing into the WTC by accident. I was surprised it hadn't happened before. I mean, the WTC was BIG, and planes fly through there all the time, right? Then the second plane hit.

Now, mind you, I was hearing this three hours after it really happened. But to me it was happening as I listened. The reactions on the radio and in myself were as real time as anything.

I rode on the train to work, and no one spoke. Howard, upon hearing that a second plane had hit, had decided it was a terrorist attack. No one on the train wanted to do anything but think of what it meant. Should we all go home and gather canned goods? Will those of us whose eyes hadn't been destroyed by computer screens have to go off to Boot Camp? We would definitely go to war over this. One thing was for sure: Nothing would ever be the same.

I went in to work and found out that the CEO of my company had asked everyone to stay home, but because of my commute, I'd left before the message got there. We were expecting a visit from Microsoft to show us the then-pre-release Xbox and some games, so I figured I'd wait it out. Scared out of my wits. Knowing deep down that, if there were going to be more targets, San Francisco could have been one of them.

Two other people from my office showed up, out of the entire staff--one of our senior editors, and our editor-in-chief. At the appointed time, the MS reps showed up. They had landed in SFO that morning, before it all happened. I couldn't imagine having landed moments before hearing the news.

So the rest of that work day we played Xbox. We played Fuzion Frenzy, Bloodwake, and Halo. We scrounged the local neighborhood for a deli that was open. We played more Xbox. We didn't talk about the WTC incident at all, except at the end of the day, to say, "Thanks for braving terrorism with us." To this day I'm proud that we were there in the city, and I'm glad that I wasn't at home all day watching horrible news footage of people leaping to their deaths and of landmarks crumbling to the ground with thousands trapped inside.

The work day over, I rode the train home, called my girlfriend, and cried. I was already mourning the carefree feelings of September 10th, when the worst I had to worry about was what I was going to eat for lunch, whether I could afford to take my girlfriend out to eat, and other similar "problems." I just knew that things would never be the same.

Now, a year later, things are just about back to normal. Americans are free to hate each other again. Drivers shout at pedestrians, spam fills up my emailbox, and yay, Oakland has toped the national charts again for the nation's per-capita murder center.

It's odd, but in some ways I now look back at the first few months after 9/11 and wish that the human spirit we Americans discovered during that time could have lasted. Now we're arguing about whether or not there should be nudity in a new BMX game for PS2, when months before we as a nation were helping families build lives out of the rubble of the WTC. Now we're arguing over what sort of memorial should stand there, as if the hundreds of bodies still trapped at the site weren't enough.

Anyway, like the original author of this thread.... Sept. 11th was the day that I gamed.

I was working at home, doing pre-sales network engineering and writing in the evening. Business was just beginning to pick up for me, as I was new to the day job. Customers were beginning to call me back, and things were looking up.

I had the radio on and heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC. Like many, I thought it was a Cessna, maybe someone showing off who got too close. A few minutes later, the reports of the second plane came in. I knew immediately that it was a terrorist attack and ran downstairs, telling my wife to turn on the TV. We watched the reports of the other two planes, and saw the towers collapse over and over. And we walked outside that week amazed at the empty skies that normally have 4 or 5 planes visible, heading to the nearby airport.

I didn't get much done that whole week. My 3 year old was afraid. He wondered why we were so sad, and the hardest thing I've ever done was to explain to him while keeping my composure that "some airplanes hit some big buildings and a lot of people died". My wife had to leave the room. I should have seen the next question coming. "Will the airplanes fly into our house?". Inside I was suffering, but I kept a straight face. I assured him that they would not. He relaxed visibly after that. He didn't know where NYC was or even understand what dying was, other than it was a bad thing. He ran off to play, and later when I was alone I cried like a baby; the first time I had cried since I felt him kick in his mother's womb for the first time. God I love my kids.

I feel great sympathy for those who had to explain to their children that a parent wasn't coming home. I know I couldn't have kept my composure in such a horrible scenario, and I wonder if I could even hold on to my sanity.

Now, I'm working a different contract; my customers simply stopped buying after 9/11. But things are slowly getting better, both emotionally and financially. I used to think that NYC was a far off place that didn't affect me on any level. Now I know better, and for the first time I hope to visit it someday; not to see ground zero, but to enjoy the rest of the city. My wife and I, and our two boys, aren't living in fear.

We're still shocked, sad, and angry. But we are not afraid.

I was in the middle of a lake rowing when the first plane hit. I get up real early.

Aaron.

wow. only a week from today...