Remember, remember the 11th of September,
World Trade Center, planes, and fear.
People may demean what this day means
But I’ll never forget those who are dear.
— RoninAnwar
I was in haste that morning. I always have hasty mornings. This is because I’m always late. On this particular morning I was late for work. I was cleaned and out of my door in 10 minutes. It never takes me long to get ready once I realize that I’ve snoozed past the 20 minute “safe time”.
The drive to work was roughly 10 minutes. I was lucky in geography back then. I was in my college mode of transportation once again. That was a result of being on the receiving end of a four car wreck a couple of months before. The 87 Escort EXP that had gotten me in and around the UAH campus didn’t have a CD player. I flipped the radio on hoping to catch one good song to start the day right. What I got was the news.
A building had fell. Where I didn’t know. The reports were frantic and ironically non-informative. I figured that some sort of accident or natural disaster was going on. Another Exxon Valdez maybe or a new earthquake in the US.
I arrive at work. The office is in chaos. No one is at their desk and they already knew what had happened. Someone had flown an airplane into the World Trade Center. My co-workers and I, including the head honcho, eventually ended up in the fishbowl. The fishbowl was what we called our conference room. The glass doors and walls facing into the main office made that definition clear.
In the fishbowl was our TV. All of us were transfixed. We watched, dumbfounded, as the second building fell.
The rest of the day, for me, was spent fielding calls from clients, trying to regain some semblance of order. I tried to keep and eye on CNN.com but their site was crashed. They had to revert to text updates because of the sheer volume of hits on their site. And they still didn’t have much in the way of news.
The rest of the day was a blur. The Pentagon was hit. The failed attempt to strike at the White House. The shutdown of every airport in the United States of America.
I saw the ash covered faces in New York and wondered how I would handle things if Ground Zero came to Huntsville. Would I cower? Would I fight?
I was walking outside my office building and looked up to see an airplane heading for Huntsville International. I looked up and I wondered, is it going to burst into flames? Is it heading for an unknown lab on the arsenal?
That seems an absurd thought now. But back then, on that day, anything was possible and every possibility was severe.
It’s five years later and the Trade Center site is a blank hole in the ground. No effort has been made to rebuild. Fingers are still being pointed. The globally acknowledged culprit remains free.
That day has been shaped into a bat. Politicians constantly swing it around in order to stir the crowds into a frenzy, into their frenzy. Or worse yet, it’s been turned into a bible where sermons are constantly being preached. Never forget. Never ever forget.
Idiots. How could we forget? The entire world saw it as it happened. It is a thing burned into the consciousness of every American I know.
It’s five years later and I still remember the man-made tragedy that changed the mind set of an entire country.
