Five years later
I was on my way to work--back then I started at 10--and was listening to the BBC on the Boston NPR station. I couldn't figure out for the longest what had happened, since I tuned in partway through. It wasn't until I got to my office that several people told me what was up.
I tried to get in touch with my mother in Chicago to see if she'd heard from my godbrother, who lived in Manhattan, and I tried to contact my friend in Brooklyn. I had another friend visiting NYC with her mom, but I had absolutely no way to contact her, so I just fretted.
We kept getting conflicting reports about what was happening on the company side; I worked in the suburbs but our company's main offices were in downtown Boston. Finally, when they evacuated downtown, we were told that we could go home. I did, and I sat in front of CNN almost constantly for the next two weeks.
I was fortunate: all of the people I was worried about were fine.
I remember thinking two things: one was hoping that the people responsible were not, in fact, Muslim, because of the racist hysteria that would erupt. I still remember how people were all set to "go get 'em"! after Oklahoma City, before we found out that the terrorists were a nice white Christian boys. My other thought, a little later was, "Wow, isn't it great to see everyone pulling together? Hopefully Shrub won't screw this up."
What's most horrifying to me five years on is that our government--and to a large extent, the country as a whole--hasn't learned much. If anything.
I tried to get in touch with my mother in Chicago to see if she'd heard from my godbrother, who lived in Manhattan, and I tried to contact my friend in Brooklyn. I had another friend visiting NYC with her mom, but I had absolutely no way to contact her, so I just fretted.
We kept getting conflicting reports about what was happening on the company side; I worked in the suburbs but our company's main offices were in downtown Boston. Finally, when they evacuated downtown, we were told that we could go home. I did, and I sat in front of CNN almost constantly for the next two weeks.
I was fortunate: all of the people I was worried about were fine.
I remember thinking two things: one was hoping that the people responsible were not, in fact, Muslim, because of the racist hysteria that would erupt. I still remember how people were all set to "go get 'em"! after Oklahoma City, before we found out that the terrorists were a nice white Christian boys. My other thought, a little later was, "Wow, isn't it great to see everyone pulling together? Hopefully Shrub won't screw this up."
What's most horrifying to me five years on is that our government--and to a large extent, the country as a whole--hasn't learned much. If anything.