Grammaticaster

I don’t think I have ever written down my remembrances of September 11, 2001.  So, even though it seems incredibly trite what with every blogger in the universe paying tribute and remembering and marking the solemn occasion and so forth, it is probably as good a time as any to record my memories of that day here in this, the repository of my scattered mind.

I was in Orlando, Florida.  I was finishing up my first stint at the University of Alabama, and had decided to enroll in a flight school (the timing, right?) in nearby Sanford.  I had driven down the night before, and the plan was to get up early the next morning and go apartment hunting in Altamonte Springs.  My hotel was a crappy, interstate-side La Quinta Inn – with a door that hardly locked at all and in a neighborhood that was never, even at 3 a.m., quiet.  Despite my exhaustion and the noisy environs, I was actually in a pretty good mood.  I was graduating.  I had a purpose in life.  I was taking charge and doing something different and new and exciting. 

Being a little creeped-out, however, I slept with the television on – something with some soothing talk that I didn’t have to concentrate on too much: CNN.  I woke up, probably a little late but not unexpectedly so since I had gotten in late the night before, probably sometime around 8:15.  CNN still softly going through the morning-show routine, I took a shower.  When I stepped out and toweled off, there was a smoking hole in one of the World Trade Center towers, and the talking heads were speculating that a small plane had gone off course (which I thought was odd since it was by all appearances a clear, gorgeous day in New York City).  As reports trickled in – witnesses who said it was a much bigger plane, aviation experts talking about what may have gone wrong, etc. – the tragedy manifested itself right there in front of me… live on television.  The anchor was interviewing someone and they had the split-screen going, with live footage of the Trade Center on the non-interview half.  As the interview was going on, an airplane appeared in the wide shot on the right-hand side.  The airplane was low and in the middle of all the buildings.  I remember thinking "well no wonder an airplane hit a building – look how close they fly to those skyscrapers!"  Then it went into the side of the second tower.  The plume of fire burst out the other side and the story changed.  The anchor and his guest stopped mid-sentence as people everywhere tried to process what they were witnessing.

I sat on the edge of the bed and watched the footage continue.  The rescue efforts.  The speculation on who was responsible.  The Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania.  When I would walk outside the door (never too far from the television) to have a cigarette, what I noticed first off was the absence of sound.  I don’t know if I was imagining it or what – obviously there was still traffic and people doing things outside – but there was no aircraft noise overhead.  The sky was an impossibly clear blue.  They had grounded all air traffic, but whether my mind just accentuated that fact or if Orlando was actually perceptively quieter I have no idea.

When the first tower fell, I called my father, mostly just to talk to somebody friendly and real.  He answered the phone with a familiar "heyyy, buddy!"  I said, "you’re not watching TV, are you?"  He said no, and I told him he’d better turn it on.  He said okay and asked what channel.  I said "it doesn’t matter."  We watched the second tower come down together.

The rest of that day is not very clear to me.  I remember ending the night in a sports bar across the street, sipping and not really enjoying a beer with a tiny spattering of locals.  No one was talking.  There was no music on.  All the televisions were on the news channels.  I remember sobbing like a child when Congress sang "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps.  I broke down again in my room later that night, when they showed the band at the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in place of "God Save the Queen."  In the in-between spaces I alternated from outright tears to numb, slack-jawed shock and horror. 

And that was that.  The next day I got up and found an apartment.  I stayed another night, then packed up and came home.  I graduated.  I got my commercial pilot’s license.  Life happened.  Unfolded.  Life went on. 

I will end with a couple of links.  9/11 was a horrendous atrocity.  It was, indeed, a defining moment for my generation – just as the assassination of JFK was a defining moment for my parents’ generation.  But, on this day of remembrance, I find myself considering the larger facts.  Consider the casualties of 9/11 against the casualties of, say, the war in Iraq.  Which is more atrocious?

No, we should never forget.  We should honor those who were innocently slaughtered, and those who gave their lives to save them.  Be we should be mindful of our own actions as well, lest we go down in the annals of history as even more despicable than the Al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the attacks – the mastermind of which, by the way, is still very much at-large.