9-1-1

Where were you?

     I am thankful for what I learned growing up. The events of 9/11 would have been quite a bit different for me. I am certain I would have been as hateful as the rest of the hypocritical d*********s.

     The events leading up to 9/11 made everything appear to be an ordinary day in New York. I traveled to Manhattan one year to the day before the catastrophe.  I saw some weird stuff there that I had never seen in Idaho. There were painted cow statues everywhere. There were homeless people shouting profanity. Bible Nazis were in my face pushing religious propaganda into my hands and asking for money. There were painted people standing still and waiting for money. There were African American activists screaming about the injustices of the white man. The weirdest thing I saw was some red ball floating in the sky near Central Park. I have no clue what that was.

     As though I was unwittingly getting a foreshadowing of events, I took a picture of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2000. I took the picture from a ferry boat on the way to the Statue of Liberty. It was probably the best part of the trip because I got to see the intimate side of New Yorkers when a cab driver gave me a ride to my destination.

     About a year later, someone landed on the Statue of Liberty. He was hanging from his parachute on the statue. I cannot remember if this was something he got into trouble about.

     9/11/2011-I was up in the morning getting ready to go to work. I think it was the second day on the job at a car wash. At the time, jobs were scarce and I struggled to at least find this one. As I got dressed, I saw the first tower was engulfed in smoke. They said that it was struck by an airplane. My first thought was that someone pulled another stunt and miscalculated. I went to work.

     On the way to work, I heard on the radio that the other tower was struck by another airplane. I began to wonder what was going on. Then I heard that the Pentagon was struck. At that moment I thought that a plane could fall from the sky at any moment and kill me.

     Work was eerily quiet when it was normally full of automobiles. What would happen next? I waited to hear more news on airplanes crashing into buildings. The battle was on to search for any more planes containing hijackers. Another plane crashed and did not make it to the next target.

     Some customers came in. Everyone was in a state of shock. Nobody knew what was going to happen. An elderly couple approached me and stated that they were scared for our generation. History was about to repeat itself and I expected that the Arabs who had nothing to do with it would face the consequences. I was certain the couple were concerned that we would turn to nuclear weapons as we did in World War II. I doubted that much because the nuclear weapons ended the war and started a whirlwind of paranoia.

      We all just stood at work. The manager came outside and told us, "This is history."

     For once, I had grown sick of television. Many years prior, my eyes were glued on Desert Storm. For the first time in years, I watched the news. They played the same footage repetitively for days, months, and years. I watched for the first two days. How could anyone do this without thinking of the remorse after? I grew weary of the news. It wasn't just the hijackers who were terrorists, it was also the journalists that consistently played the same s**t over and over again. It was the scratch in the record that nobody was touching. Over and over we watched people burn and fall from the sky. We watched the planes crash we were watching people die. We were watching people falling from buildings. We were watching people running from buildings and suffocating from the debris. It was time to shut the television off. Every year on 9/11, all sources of media are off.

     For days the sky was eerily silent. Planes were not allowed in the sky. Anyone who flew was in trouble. I never knew how quiet it was without planes. The feeling was surreal.

     The streets of Manhattan were similar to a ghost town. Slowly everything came back to life again. I think this was when we made a mistake. We stopped what we were doing. While we were not taking care of business, the economy crumbled. Jobs became scarce and everyone lost their jobs and minds. People did not have a job between 6 months to a couple of years. Airfare went up when nobody wanted to fly anymore anyway.