Thursday, September 13, 2007

Threadjack: 9/11

1:04 PM | Posted by Warwriter Widow

I remember watching Barney and PBS all morning.  I don't remember why my husband was home early, but we had to go to pay some bills, so we went for a ride.  About halfway into the drive I put the radio on and heard "All planes have been grounded."

Say what?

I remember getting bits and pieces, trying to put together what was going on.  I knew there was an attack in New York.  For about 15 minutes until we drove to Sears to pay the bills, they didn't mention exactly what was going on.  I remember that I thought it was a nuclear attack, and being that we're on the eastern seaboard, if the winds blew right we were going to get the fallout.

It was about 1 pm before I got to see what had actually happened.  We went to the TV section of Sears and watched the playback.  I tried really hard not to laugh - yes, that's callous - because I was relieved that it wasn't a nuclear bomb.

I had no friends or family in New York, so the whole thing was very distant.  In my mind it turned into another documentable moment in history, where I collected the local and NYT and USA Today newspapers, the Time and Newsweek magazines for that week.  There is only one picture that stays in my mind whenever I think of this - it's a picture from USA Today, of a man in midair, the fires of the tower in the background.  The caption said that he jumped from the tower that hadn't collapsed.  Jumped.  My stomach still turns thinking about it.
 
I don't want to discuss what I felt afterward, because I know damn well it's entirely politically incorrect.

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