I just read through my last post and felt guilty. I’m ranting about car problems on September 11th.
Sure, I could take the angle that I’m just treating this day like it’s any other day. But it just isn’t any other day. Look at the newspapers. Watch the news. Listen to the radio. Everyone wants you to know that this is a day where you’re supposed to feel sad. Feel angry. Feel confused and patriotic. Feel any way you want, just don’t feel the same way you did yesterday.
On the way in to work today, still incredibly frustrated by my car deciding to do anything it can to stop me from coming in, I picked up a Boston Metro. The first half of the issue is dedicated to 9/11 stories. How people are coping. What is going to be built in NYC in the trade center’s place. Are we safer now five years later? How the ticket agent that sold boarding passes to the hijackers feels now.
And there was a stat that stuck out: 95% of Americans remember where they were that day.
I do.
On September 10th, I was in L.A. flying back to Boston. I came back in the late afternoon, and decided I wasn’t going to go to work the next morning. I was living in Mission Hill with roommates, on co-op at Northeastern. I woke up and turned on the TV and started watching the news coverage. At first, it seemed like an accident, and that’s how the news was reporting it. But after a while, when the second plane hit, you knew that something different was happening.
The only thing that stands out in my mind was feeling confused. It was just a feeling of realization that things weren’t going to be the same from now on.
So, do you remember what you were doing and your initial reaction?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Stacey // Sep 11, 2006 at 10:25 am
I posted today about where I was: http://hodoeporicon.blogspot.com/2006/09/where-were-you.html
Glad to see someone else making note.
2 Barry Freed // Sep 11, 2006 at 10:44 am
Thanks for letting me know. Checking it out now.
3 kristina // Sep 11, 2006 at 1:06 pm
It was surreal, that was my main thought. I was in the chapter room of my sorority house, eating breakfast with another girl. I was watching the news of the first plane, and both of us were thinking “freak accident.” I remember seeing the second plane hitting and it starting sinking in that this wasn’t an accident at all. I went ahead to my 9:30am class, International Finance, where a couple of us had heard what happened. My teacher knew nothing of it and thought we were joking with her. That night I was working at a restaurant and we all went outside at around 7pm to light candles in a moment of silence. And then someone started singing God Bless America. Surreal.
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