Today, as we all know, is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Here's what I think and remember:
I remember being woken up in Las Vegas by a phone call from my wife telling me something is happened in New York.
I remember going to the other hotel room to wake up the other guys.
I remember watching TV for 18 hours straight; feeling slightly ill the whole time.
I remember trying to find out when we could get a flight out of Las Vegas.
I remember going to the Greyhound terminal and being happy they didn't gouge us.
I remember returning to the same terminal with luggage and finding 500 other people there.
I remember not actually getting on a bus until after 4 am; we were supposed to leave at 9:45 pm.
I remember being in the mountains, freezing since we were wearing shorts.
I remember getting switched over to a charter bus in Grand Junction, CO, thinking it was going to be better.
I remember getting more and more mad at the people responsible for this.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night during a rainstorm driving through Nebraska with the bus swerving in the middle of the road as the driver searched for his cell phone.
I remember wishing I was in some branch of the armed forces so I could hunt the bastards down myself.
I remember thinking I wasn't going to make it home for the first ultrasound for our first baby.
I remember someone buying "Fight Club" to watch on the bus. A building is blown up in the end. Not a good choice.
I remember how nice everyone was to each other for a time after 9/11.
I remember finally making it home the day before the ultrasound; feeling disgusting and dirty after 36 hours on a bus, and extremely happy to give my wife a hug and kiss.
I can't watch the footage on TV. I get angry and upset and still slightly ill. Part of it is due to where I work, part of it is just because it happened, period. I have never seen any of the movies, and I don't think I ever will. It is going to be on TV all day here at work, luckily the TV is behind me and the sound is off.
No, I will never forget; for reasons that directly affected me, and because of all the people that died for no good reason.
I remember being woken up in Las Vegas by a phone call from my wife telling me something is happened in New York.
I remember going to the other hotel room to wake up the other guys.
I remember watching TV for 18 hours straight; feeling slightly ill the whole time.
I remember trying to find out when we could get a flight out of Las Vegas.
I remember going to the Greyhound terminal and being happy they didn't gouge us.
I remember returning to the same terminal with luggage and finding 500 other people there.
I remember not actually getting on a bus until after 4 am; we were supposed to leave at 9:45 pm.
I remember being in the mountains, freezing since we were wearing shorts.
I remember getting switched over to a charter bus in Grand Junction, CO, thinking it was going to be better.
I remember getting more and more mad at the people responsible for this.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night during a rainstorm driving through Nebraska with the bus swerving in the middle of the road as the driver searched for his cell phone.
I remember wishing I was in some branch of the armed forces so I could hunt the bastards down myself.
I remember thinking I wasn't going to make it home for the first ultrasound for our first baby.
I remember someone buying "Fight Club" to watch on the bus. A building is blown up in the end. Not a good choice.
I remember how nice everyone was to each other for a time after 9/11.
I remember finally making it home the day before the ultrasound; feeling disgusting and dirty after 36 hours on a bus, and extremely happy to give my wife a hug and kiss.
I can't watch the footage on TV. I get angry and upset and still slightly ill. Part of it is due to where I work, part of it is just because it happened, period. I have never seen any of the movies, and I don't think I ever will. It is going to be on TV all day here at work, luckily the TV is behind me and the sound is off.
No, I will never forget; for reasons that directly affected me, and because of all the people that died for no good reason.
9 comments:
I remember watching the news in the morning and seeing the second plane hit. :(
DC: Yeah, that's one of the things I really can't watch.
Mike~
So true! Well as I was cleaning away at Mom's last night 9pm she called me and said Lori the remote is broke you broke it while cleaning.Turns out she forgot the channel for House! Thanks for your quick response!Well I was very sluggish after cleaning for 7 straight hours and getting only 2 rooms complete. I said I deserved some M&M's needless to say I opened the white drawer that was so clean and there was NO M&M'S left so there ending my cleaning for the day! Nice to see you guys.
Lori: there was a whole bag in there. It was kind of buried. You may have missed it.
I was actually supposed to fly out of town on Sept. 14, and I remember wondering whether I'd be able to make my trip or not, because no one knew when the airports would reopen. Fortunately, unlike yours, it wasn't a trip I HAD to make...but since that was the first day planes were allowed to fly again, I was able to go after all.
I remember arriving at work (I was still living in Memphis then) and hearing about the first plane on the radio, and thinking it must have been a bad accident with a private plane. When the news broke about the second plane at the WTC, and the plane at the Pentagon, we all knew differently.
My boss called me because she was running late - couldn't stop watching the TV. "I bet it's Osama bin Laden," she told me. Well, it wasn't Saddam Hussein.
This is a great post, Mike.
Mike, that makes two of us... not forgetting, that is. And, I remember feeling really small and insignificant.
Florinda: I thought the same thing at first, then I turned on the TV.
I'm sure your plane ride was very quiet. Many were those first few days.
Thanks for the nice words.
Veronda: Me too. And pissed off all at the same time.
Hi Mike :(
I meant to come by on Thursday, but I ended up not doing much blog jogging that day. Sigh. I was told about what was happening from my spouse as well. I remember wondering things like "how could the WTC just be gone?" To me, it was such an absured notion. I think I was actually laughing at my husband, because he was being so silly with his very bad joke, then when he realized that I hadn't been watching TV that morning, he got really quiet. SILENT. I turned around and saw that there was a little red dot lit up on the cable box. "Funny," I thought,"I've never seen that before!"
Bin Laden should have been caught by now. I don't understand. I saw a special on the History Channel the other night called 102 Minutes that change America, and featured raw, unedited videos of what happened that day, taken mostly by everyday people. It will haunt me, but maybe in a way that will keep me proactive, like never forgetting my right to vote. Make sense?
Have a good weekend.
Carly
Carly: Yeah, I know what you mean. Thanks for coming by.
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