Do You Remember Where You Were?

I do. 

I had my head buried in my headphones working since early in the morning...not a clue in the world. My friend, L, called me and asked me if I had been watching the news? I never watch the news. Why? She told me to just go turn the TV on. They were replaying the first plane hitting the tower and saying that they were trying to figure what kind of commercial airliner had hit the tower. A 767 maybe. My ex had upgraded to that plane...and he was in New York. Was it his airline? The kids and I watched with no word...the emergency number into his airline was not answering. The kids went to school. And I waited to hear. Watching. Horrified.

Then the second crash. To this day, I remember the feeling. Standing up and rushing to the TV. What had I just witnessed? The chilling feeling that started at my head and ran through my whole body. And then the towers started to fall. 

I was frantic. Where was he? Finally. A call comes in from the wife of the captain he was with saying, yes, they were in New York, but they were fine. I notified the kids their daddy was okay. When I finally spoke to him, he said that he knew the numbers they initially thought might have been in the towers when they fell would be too high. He said people were fleeing as fast as they could from the burning buildings. As I remember, the original numbers were in the tens of thousands.


They were just outside the blast area. They spent many days stranded in New York. No traffic. Hardly anybody moving around. Except emergency vehicles. 

He has a letter from the hotel talking about what they were doing for anybody still at their hotel because of what had happened. 

I remember reading a Dave Barry column soon after it happened and a phrase he used has stuck with me. They did not care who we were...they killed us "Just for Being Americans."  


It is a column worth reading again today.