Where were You and What were You Doing?

Where were you eight years ago today and what were you doing?

I was working at Penn Traffic in Syracuse, NY.  I used to listen to Imus in the Morning at my desk almost every day, and this Tuesday was no different..  I remember hearing someone call in to the show, describing what they seeing out their window: a cloud of black smoke pouring from the World Trade Center, where a plane had just crashed into it.  I actually leaned forward to listen, wondering if somehow they were playing a rerun from 1993 and I hadn’t realized it?

I remember the co-worker who sat behind me, Peg, ask me if something was going on, but I didn’t want to say what I thought had happened.  The last thing I wanted to do was start a vicious rumor!  I picked up the phone and called my mother at home.  As soon as she answered, I asked her to turn on the television and tell me what she saw.  She asked “What channel and why, what’s going on?”, but I said “Just turn it on any channel and tell me what you see.”  She told me what she saw and we hung up.

I remember looking around for a split second, then going up the aisles in the office I worked in, telling each of the 4-5 rows of people what had just happened.  I felt like I couldn’t just let everyone work and laugh and chit-chat with each other, while I knew that a tragedy was taking place right at that moment.  What seemed like just a moment later, someone ran to tell me that my mother was on the phone again.  She said she had just watched a second plane fly into the other building.

There’s no need for me to really explain the rest of the details, everyone knows what happened after that.  But I still remember that dreadful 1-2 hours like it was yesterday.  It seemed like every 10 minutes another terrible thing happened.  I remember not wanting to get up to talk to anyone or use the restroom, in case I missed something.  I remember other people going back to their work, but all I could do was sit and listen to the radio.

The entire rest of the day is lost to me.  I know I found a television on my lunch, and I watched coverage for the rest of the night.  Some people didn’t want to see or hear 24/7 coverage, but I didn’t want to watch anything else.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt such profound sadness and a feeling of helplessness.  I wanted to do something, but there really wasn’t anything I could do, not at that moment.

I was actually afraid to go to sleep that night.  I wasn’t afraid something would happen to me, but I was afraid something would happen somewhere else and I wouldn’t be aware of it, I’d just be sleeping, peacefully unaware.  I did eventually fall asleep, and nothing else happened.

I wish I could say that since the 9/11 attacks I’ve changed and I do more to help others and my country.  I really haven’t, though.  I’ve grown up and matured, but no more than what’s normal.  I’m a typical, average person who carries on with life in the same manner as a lot of Americans do.  But I do stop at random times each year and think about that day and what it must have been like for those who lived and died, those who lost loved ones or the ones that were able to rejoice because their loved ones made it home that tragic day.

I dwell on the sadness probably a little longer than I should, but I don’t care.  I want to remember every detail of that day and exactly how I felt.  I think about how unaffected I felt when I was a child and learned about tragic events in history.  Things that don’t happen in your lifetime sometimes seem like they happened so long ago, when it really hasn’t been very long at all.  Fifty years used to seem like an eternity, now it seems like yesterday,and I’m only 32 years old!  I wonder if my nieces and nephews who weren’t alive then, or who were too young to really remember, have the same feeling of distance from 9/11/01 as I did when I learned about Pearl Harbor or about the assassination of JFK?

That’s where I was on 9/11/01 and that’s just a little glimpse of some of the things I think about as each year passes by.