I Remember Where I Was...

[thescarletwoman]

Thank you ALL for the well wishes on job starting. I'll actually reply when I'm not bone dead tired. Just know that all went well today.

I did, though, before I toddled off to bed want to say something about today. Feel free to, if you want, to skim by this. I don't know how many people posted about 9/11 today. I haven't even looked at my flist.


It's hard to believe that 5 years have passed. It's... eerie in a way. I've been to NYC several (well, maybe more than several) times since the attacks. But only once have I been down to Ground Zero.

I do remember, while standing in the long line, being so completely overwhelmed. Passing the one fire station and seeing patches from all across the country from different fire and police units. And fighting back the shiver when I saw the patch from the Erie PD. How I found it... I'll never know.

I can't help but think of the song from Assasins, "Something Just Broke" sung during Kennedy's vignette. "I remember where I was... I'll remember it forever." Because I will. I will never forget sitting in Senior Religion Seminar and hearing our principal come on the PA system to tell us. Will never forget shuffling blindly to English in the next period to watch the news.

I never saw the towers fall. I was too busy running down the hall, getting to a phone to call home every fifteen minutes. Wondering if anyone had heard from my cousin. At least she was safe, never having made it into the city from Queens.

I will always remember talking to my cousin later... finding out that a mutual friend of ours (a flight attendant for United)... flew that day. Out of Newark. Three flights before that flight.

It still gives me a shiver to think about it.

I will always remember, being in NYC in 1999 for the first time. And lounging about in the lobby of Tower #2 while friends of ours went up to the observation deck. I had a headache and didn't go up, Dad doesn't like heights. So it was our friends who went up and video taped footage from the view up there. I still haven't watched the video.

But life goes on. Things go on, get better. But it's still there. And it also, shouldn't be something that's remembered once a year. It happened.

I don't agree with the war. I will say that much. But the fact that the attack occured is not something that should be swept under the rug. It's a fine line.

All I know is I'll remember it forever.

Comments

[adaptor.livejournal.com]

I was supposed to fly into Boston that morning. My friends in London were erroneously told it was two flights into Boston that crashed. Speaking of crashing, the international phone lines went down hard and fast, so I couldn't get through to them to let them know I was okay.

When my fiancee finally got through to one of his family members we gave him the name and number of a local friend of mine to alert. The first words one friend said when she got the call were "Okay, breathing. Breathing agian."

In the end, I flew out of one of the first flights out of Boston afterward a few days later. The tension was rock solid, especially with the police dogs everywhere. When someone sneezed the whole terminal looked up.

[starshine-rain6.livejournal.com]

I was in class piano when it all started, but we didn't know it at the time. I came back to my dorm room in 21 Beech and my roommate had left the message "Alexis, turn on the news when you get back" on our dry erase board. I turned the TV on just moments after the second plane hit.

My dad was supposed to be in the towers that day for business meetings, but my mom had asked him to rearrange his schedule so he could go to a function with her at home and leave for NYC a day or two later. Kinda scary.

And I'll always remember that Oltman STILL had rehearsals that day.

[strinktac.livejournal.com]

I was in Sight Reading Piano class with Laurent. His wife called and told him. He got off the phone and told the class "planes just hit the Twin Towers". And then he went right back to teaching. We were shocked and speechless.. but we were forced to simply sight read. It wasn't until after class, when my mom came to pick me up for work, that the true meaning of what he had said became clear.