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9/11: Your feelings

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by novelist_wannabe, Sep 10, 2006.

  1. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    MSNBC is showing real-time coverage from 5 years ago. The first tower just collapsed 5 minutes ago and aired live when it happened, and Brokaw & Co. blabbering on as if it hadn't happened.

    Oh and my feeling about it ... 9/11 sucks.
     
  2. Dyno

    Dyno Well-Known Member

    I live in the DC area and grew up in the NY area, so 9/11 is a powerful day for me.

    I knew 9/11/01 was going to be a really busy day for me in the office, so I wanted to get in early. I’m not a morning person, though, and instead of getting in early, I was running late. As I drove to work, I had 2 things on my mind, other than work: finding a hotel for my upcoming trip to Paris and calling my mom to wish her a good trip before she left for California in a few hours. As usual, I was listening to Howard Stern. When I heard the first reports of a plane hitting the WTC, I switched stations from Stern to the all news station. My first thought, so morbid in retrospect, was that my mom’s flight later that day would be safe, because how often are there 2 plane crashes in one day? After I heard what was going on, it’s all a blur. At some point, I called my college roommate, whose office was in the Empire State Building to beg her to get out (she wouldn’t, despite many calls from me, her parents and other friends). I called my mom, who was still asleep to tell her to turn on the TV. The local stations were off the air because the antennas/transponders (don’t know the correct term) were on the roof of one of the WTC buildings. At this point, the news was so sketchy, I told her to call her airline to see if they’d be flying that day. I can’t remember if I made these calls before I got to the office or after.

    By the time I got to work, people were gathered in the conference rooms and in offices with TVs. If chaos can be quiet, that’s what my office was like. No one knew what to do. One of the administrative assistants couldn’t locate her fiancé, who she thought had a meeting at the Pentagon that day (she finally reached him – he was not there). I live near the Pentagon, so after that was hit, I started to freak out. The decision was made to close my office and I realized that with the attack on the Pentagon, I probably wouldn’t be able to get home. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Two coworkers graciously offered to let me stay with them. I spent the night of 9/11/01 at a colleague’s house, wearing borrowed clothes, glued to the TV and staying in touch with friends and family as much as I could.

    I went to work on 9/12 and was able to get home that night. Unfortunately, being home brought no comfort. It was the weirdest thing – I was afraid to go to sleep. Not only that, I was afraid to be in the confined space of my apartment. The only way I could “relax” was to keep the balcony door open. I finally fell asleep at about 3:00 a.m., fully dressed, with my shoes on, on the couch, with the TV on. I spent the night of 9/13 back at a friend’s house, before driving up to my parents’ on 9/14. I’ll never forget driving up the northern part of the New Jersey Turnpike and seeing the smoking remains of the WTC.

    9/11/01 was a clear, gorgeous, sunny day in DC – pretty perfect, weather-wise. Up until about a year ago, whenever the weather was similar, I would think of 9/11.

    My mom’s trip to CA was not rescheduled. I love to travel, but it was a good 6 months before I was ready to get on a plane again. I canceled that trip to Paris.
     
  3. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    Because I lived on the West Coast at the time and didn't see the live coverage until about 11:30 a.m. EDT (I got a call from my mom in the D.C. area at about 8:30 a.m. my time to wake the heck up and turn on the TV), I'm watching the CNN replay. I don't know, I just feel like it's something I should do.
     
  4. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    I'm having a hard time with the movies and dramatizations....we saw it happen for real, I don't want to watch an interpretation. Nothing will ever show us more than the actual reporting that day.

    I had to go to a funeral that day...I remember looking into the sky, the eerie vastness of a bright blue sky with no planes. A few days later, when air travel resumed, I remember seeing a plane in the sky and sobbing hysterically. That's America. We move on.

    I've been to Ground Zero maybe a dozen times in the last five years....the first time two weeks after the attack, when smoke and fire was still smouldering through the rubble, the most recently last month. If you've never gone, God, you should, before it's rebuilt and prettied up. You cannot imagine the vastness and extent of the devastation. If you can stomach the idiots posing for happy smiling pictures ('Look, here we are at the 9/11 site! My hair was a mess!), it's an experience you will never forget.

    Funny, I also remember threads on the old board, hoping our NY members were okay. Jonaco, reporting on the situation. Many of you, I'm sure, who reported to us under old names.

    If you're over 35 or so, maybe you'll agree that it seems like a million years ago that our biggest fear was nuclear war with Russia...I guess we can only hope that the threats we fear today will someday become an equally distant memory.

    RIP to the victims, and may God watch over their children and families.
     
  5. three_bags_full

    three_bags_full Well-Known Member

    The only way my life is different than it was that day is that I've been away from my wife for about 22 months since.

    And, FB, we don't agree on much, but we both agree 9/11 sucks.
     
  6. MileHigh

    MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

    I woke up early today to watch the NBC replay and it's still shocking and numbing ... five years later.

    I was in Miami five years ago and a friend called and woke me up, telling me to turn on the TV. It was just after the attack on the Pentagon.

    I hung up and called my parents, who are east of Los Angeles and probably weren't awake yet or didn't have the TV on, and at the time, there was no telling what was going on or if there were going to be West Coast attacks.

    It's amazing that it happened. And amazing it's been five years.
     
  7. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Have no interest in the commemorating. Who needs to be reminded? It's still a pretty vivid entry in the old memory bank.
    In my opinion, what the TV nets are falling all over themselves doing the past few days is pornography-emotional pornography and the pornography of violence.
     
  8. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    Gee, I'm not necessarily into commemorating as much as rewatching the news reports to see how things were reported, mostly because I'm a news junkie. I have no interest in watching any of the other stuff, the movies, etc. Just the news.
     
  9. Yawn

    Yawn New Member

    Let's put it this way. I feel different about Islam today than I did on Sept. 10, 2001.
     
  10. Dirk Legume

    Dirk Legume Active Member

    For me, and I think for almost everyone, it was the second plane. When the news first broke, we were incredulous "you mean a plane actually hit the World Trade Center?", and that piece of news caused us to turn on the stations one small TV. Just in time to see the second plane hit. And you knew when you saw it, you just knew, that something that you thought could not happen here had just happened.
     
  11. Yawn

    Yawn New Member

    I'd rather watch the actual event than the news goons asking experts on experts: "Are we safe today?"
     
  12. Ragu --
    I don't mean to sound like a civics lecture here but, if the rights and civil liberties of any of my fellow citizens are diminished, then mine are. If we are encouraged to look upon our civil liberties as obstacles, or loopholes, or anything less than the only things that make this country anything more than Great Britain with better beaches, then the country is diminished. If the president assumes powers -- and is justified in doing so by his pet lawyers in the DoJ -- far beyond those the Founders envisioned -- indeed, that directly contravene the Founders' intent -- that wreck the system of checks and balances, then my country is changed. If I am encouraged to be fearful of my own freedoms, then I am changed.
    I was an American on 9/10/06. I am one today. I want the best of my country back from the authoritarian yahoos who have hijacked it. I want a tough, smart country. I decline to be afraid because the temporary occupant of the Oval Office tells me I should be. I don't need him to protect me. I'm not 12 years old.
     
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