Personal: September 2006 Archives

Last night, at a party, several of us sat around and remembered where we were on 9-11 and how we first heard the news.  At that time, I was living in Atlanta and not New York and only had a visitor's perception of the city. I was in my car, driving to work, and I turned on a popular rock radio station and I heard them narrating the events. I thought it was a joke. After several minutes of listening and never getting to a joke, I called my mom, and told her to turn on the TV right now. I told her that something important was happening, but I wasn't sure what it was. When I got to work, everyone was very quiet. No one knew for sure if it was real. Then we hooked up the TV and watched. Thoughts turned to friends---were they in upper Manhattan or lower Manhattan, where did Brooklyn friends work in the city? Emails, phone calls, nothing made us feel better, but it made us feel like we were trying. A month later, I took a trip to New York with two friends and we got as close as we could to the site. The air still smelt burnt. We were the only people around besides the cops. Even to a visitor, the silence was eerie.