It was yesterday, at least according to my warped memory module...
I came in the office right after the first one hit, unaware anything was happening.
Noticed right away something was up - everyone was huddled around the TV in the conference
room, a room we typically NEVER set foot in unless corporate overlords were coming for
a visit (boss worried us common cretins would mess the room up, a la Pigpen from Peanuts I
suppose...).
When I stopped one of them scurrying down the hallway, they blurted out something about
a plane flying into a building in NYC and to my eternal embarrassment, I remember thinking
"yeah....and?"
I figured it was another deal like when that former Yankee pitcher flew into the side of a building
up there with his little Cessna or Piper or whatever it was...
Nope. Not like that.
AT ALL...and as live broadcasts started showing the scene, I knew something
was terribly wrong right away and I remember immediately getting the sense of "go home. NOW."
Told the boss I was outta there. He started to protest.
I hollered over my shoulder he and everyone else should do the same....
and to fire me if he needed to, I was gone.
Period.
The second plane hit while I was on the road, which was eerily deserted (I'd have thought things
would have been wall to wall out there, but they weren't - like everyone froze wherever they were).
Made record time to the house and did what EVERYONE did that day - secured the perimeter, saw after
my family and tried to contact the rest in all the usual faraway places - and stayed glued to the TV and
the net.
I have not lost that communal sense of being ultimately violated and outraged in the years since...and I still
want some *** over that one from those effing 13th century sub-human pieces of garbage...
Not afraid to admit that, sin or not. Sue me.
The great things to come of it, though...
The wonderful pulling together of the nation (and the world, for the most part!) in classic "good vs. evil"
style.
The hundreds and thousands of true HEROs....and I mean that in the truest sense of the word.
And eventually, the getting back to work and some sense of normalcy, showing those inbred middle eastern
scum that their evil little deeds could not buckle western civilization.
We were naive and complacent then. We aren't anymore....and that loss of innocence is the shame of it all.
