Writer's Block: 9/11
I had been sleeping at the time the first tower was hit. I had been working afternoon shift (1530-0000), and had gotten home, and to bed, late the night before. The phone rang at approx. 0900: It was my cousin A. in CA, in an absolute panic, asking if I knew where my sister, K., was at. As K. was a flight attendant and frequently had EWR/NYC and/or BOS overnights, and the specific airlines involved had not yet been announced, A. was terrified that K. might have been working one of the flights in question. I reassured her that my sister was not working on that day and asked why she was calling so early for her time zone. As she began explaining what was on the news, I could hear her daughter, L., in the background relaying information off the TV. I'll never forget hearing the gasp that next came over the phone, followed by "Mom! Another plane just hit the second tower!"
In a state of disbelief, I scrambled to turn on the TV and try to get some sort of reception with the rabbit-ears antenna. Sure enough, visible through the snowy static were plumes of smoke from both Towers. I could only stare in silence with two thoughts running in a continuous loop through my mind: "This is like something out of a plot for a bad disaster movie", and "What the fuck, two planes...? This was no accident!".
Every generation has it's Sentinel Event, the one moment in time where you will always remember where you were, and what you were doing when it occurred: Depression-era folks had Pearl Harbor; Baby Boomers, either the JFK assasination and/or the Moon landing. Gen Xers like myself were witness to the Challenger Disaster. Some would argue that Gen Yers have 9/11 as their Sentinel Event. However, I think that the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 go far beyond being one generation's claim to infamy and memory. Personally, I consider September 11, 2001 as the day that everything changed: Not just for the United States, but for the planet as a whole. And not for the bettter...