On the morning of 9/11/01 I was on the phone with our company travel agent. As I talk to her I am annoyed as hell because they can never get anything right. At one point, after she's had to ask 12 different people the same question, she gets back on the phone and says "Um....are you near a TV? Something just flew into the World Trade Center". Now, at this point I am SO annoyed and go into nothing-phases-me-New-Yorker mode. All I can think is "For fuck's sake - some weather helicopter nicks the corner of a building in New York and you can't do your job anymore?" So I finally get off the phone and try to access the New York Times.com - nothing. I try all my other news Web sites - can't get on any of them. Uh-oh. It's then that I pick up the phone and listen to my voicemails. About 7 of them in a 3-minute span from friends and family asking if I know. Oh shit - WHAT is going on? I walk into my boss' office as she's saying into the phone incredulously "What? Wait a minute...what?" As she hangs up the phone I manage to say "Do we have a TV in this office?"
We gather around the TV - these people I work with everyday and don't even know -- don't even like, really -- I just want to be at home with my family. As we watch the towers burn I have one thought - a thought that seems to me now to be so naïve and so innocent as I look back - "I wonder how they'll put the fire out at the top of the buildings? I guess they'll have to rescue people off the roof". It was then that the first tower fell.
A week later I would travel more than I did the entire previous year. I would ride a total of eight different plans to two different destinations. I would stand in line for hours and hours to board these planes. I cried for 7 days and then got on the goddamn planes just daring something to happen - I was ready to kick some ass.
|
|
