So what was I doing that day?
That Tuesday morning 5 years ago …
This would go better if I was at home reading my diary entries, so I may get a few things wrong in this.
I was working on a White House contract as the Senior Programmer (and wearing just about every other hat that was needed at the time, it made for a somewhat lopsided org chart). As it happened, that particular one was in Greenbelt, but I had been in the New Executive Office Building since Clinton’s first term.
When another person walked in, he made a comment that he would hate to be in the World Trade Center. At first I thought he meant to say the World Bank. When I asked him to clarify he mentioned a plane had hit it. Like many people, I just assumed it was a small private plane and someone had done a navigational oops.
Soon after that someone clarified the news and a TV was brought into the office. Everyone was glued to it and watched the events unfold, hitting the other tower, the collapses, the Pentagon being hit, and so on. I was especially shook when people ran out of the White House … this was a place I knew. Most of the people at our site had only been in the complex a little bit, but these were people I *knew*. All sorts of things happened on the news that morning, but everyone knows those. Two of the things that struck me though were newscasters who were normally calm clearly panicking and their interrupting one of a parade of VIPs so another one could talk to them. What was even more bizarre to me was that eventually the TV disappeared and everyone else went back to work as if nothing had happened.
Then came the chaos of getting home. I had an electrolysis appointment for that work and cancelled it. Oddly, all the other people had shown up for their appointments, like people going back to work, I suppose people were so in shock they *needed* some sort of a routine. The metro had no clear answer for me if I could get home or not (especially since I go under the Pentagon to get home). Andrea wound up with an adventure to get home from Gallaudet that involved getting a ride with friends (none of whom could get a clear answer to if the metro was running) and taking all sorts of detours.
We live in Crystal City. About a mile from the pentagon and near the only airport closed longer than the rest (National). The wind was blowing south that day, so getting home I learned what burning jet fuel smelled like. That smell had inundated our apartment building by the next morning.
In the days that followed, I could hardly put the events out of my mind. That close to a target, near a perpetually closed airport (with a small one that was closed longer than normal on my morning commute), and the overwhelming silence as the constant jet sounds just … disappeared.
Quite a few things have changed since then. The biggest everyone here knows about and was already planning anyways. It is the small ones I never saw coming that amazed me the most. Like leaving the contracting sector, increasing my volunteering, and taking a junior level job with a left-wing think tank for almost half of my old salary.
I turned on the TV when I got home on that afternoon and saw one simple thing that caused me to break down crying: a shoe, all by itself, in the rubble.
This would go better if I was at home reading my diary entries, so I may get a few things wrong in this.
I was working on a White House contract as the Senior Programmer (and wearing just about every other hat that was needed at the time, it made for a somewhat lopsided org chart). As it happened, that particular one was in Greenbelt, but I had been in the New Executive Office Building since Clinton’s first term.
When another person walked in, he made a comment that he would hate to be in the World Trade Center. At first I thought he meant to say the World Bank. When I asked him to clarify he mentioned a plane had hit it. Like many people, I just assumed it was a small private plane and someone had done a navigational oops.
Soon after that someone clarified the news and a TV was brought into the office. Everyone was glued to it and watched the events unfold, hitting the other tower, the collapses, the Pentagon being hit, and so on. I was especially shook when people ran out of the White House … this was a place I knew. Most of the people at our site had only been in the complex a little bit, but these were people I *knew*. All sorts of things happened on the news that morning, but everyone knows those. Two of the things that struck me though were newscasters who were normally calm clearly panicking and their interrupting one of a parade of VIPs so another one could talk to them. What was even more bizarre to me was that eventually the TV disappeared and everyone else went back to work as if nothing had happened.
Then came the chaos of getting home. I had an electrolysis appointment for that work and cancelled it. Oddly, all the other people had shown up for their appointments, like people going back to work, I suppose people were so in shock they *needed* some sort of a routine. The metro had no clear answer for me if I could get home or not (especially since I go under the Pentagon to get home). Andrea wound up with an adventure to get home from Gallaudet that involved getting a ride with friends (none of whom could get a clear answer to if the metro was running) and taking all sorts of detours.
We live in Crystal City. About a mile from the pentagon and near the only airport closed longer than the rest (National). The wind was blowing south that day, so getting home I learned what burning jet fuel smelled like. That smell had inundated our apartment building by the next morning.
In the days that followed, I could hardly put the events out of my mind. That close to a target, near a perpetually closed airport (with a small one that was closed longer than normal on my morning commute), and the overwhelming silence as the constant jet sounds just … disappeared.
Quite a few things have changed since then. The biggest everyone here knows about and was already planning anyways. It is the small ones I never saw coming that amazed me the most. Like leaving the contracting sector, increasing my volunteering, and taking a junior level job with a left-wing think tank for almost half of my old salary.
I turned on the TV when I got home on that afternoon and saw one simple thing that caused me to break down crying: a shoe, all by itself, in the rubble.