Where were you?

On September 11th, 2001, I was driving to work, listening to Howard Stern, when he was interrupted and passed along the news he'd heard that a small plane had hit the Twin Towers. The group wasn't too fazed at first, talking about how bad it might be, but as more information trickled in, they began leaping to the conclusion that we were under attack. I thought it must be a joke, or them overreacting to a small accident. Sure, a few people might be hurt or dead, but what's two or three people in the grand scheme of things? When we hear of a disaster, many of us have a natural, horrible instinct to immediately try to minimize it by focusing on the numbers, when in reality one untimely demise is a tragedy. As I got closer to work that morning and more accurate reports of jet airliners hitting the towers rolled in, the nightmare became real.

I don't think any work got done that day. People huddled around radios in the office. Some found a television downstairs to gather around. Theories were formed, and conclusions were leapt to. Meanwhile, coworkers slowly started wondering about loved ones who worked in the city, and tried to reach them. One woman's husband, who worked in the vicinity of the attacks, would be among the ash-covered survivors to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Another worker would learn his mother was safe as well, while a woman in the cafeteria would face the horror of losing her husband, a chef working on the top floor of one of the towers. The day got worse and worse, hearing the descriptions of bodies falling or leaping from the towers to escape the extreme heat of the inferno. No one expected one let alone both towers to crumble. It was unreal and felt like the end of the world. Flights were grounded and most television stations were knocked out with the loss of the antennas atop the towers. We were dismissed early, and in the coming days would continue to follow the story closely. At my house, only one or two television stations worked, but all carried the same story. For weeks after it happened, I cringed every time I heard a plane fly overhead. Rey pointed out how irrational this was, and the unlikelihood that my home would be a target. The towers were huge symbols of America, and had been attacked before. Nevertheless, who among the victims expected any of it when they got up to go to work in the morning, on a routine morning like any other? We weren't at war. War didn't happen, not on U.S. soil. War was something in our history books, or in far away countries we'd see blips of on the news before changing the channel to watch a sitcom or a drama.

As days went on the numbers grew. Web sites were set up by desperate people looking for lost loved ones. My ex-girlfriend e-mailed me with the news that one of the missing was the husband of a former coworker. We'd been to their wedding. They had one child, and another on the way that October. He would never be found. Life would never be the same. I noticed a profound difference between talk shows on the East and West coast, as West coast hosts like Jay Leno began joking and talking about other things in the world while the mood remained solemn for Letterman and Conan O'Brien here on the East coast. Rudy Giuliani would go on Saturday Night Live and let us know when it was time for comic relief. Time was still needed. I've never been to Ground Zero. Many of us here on Long Island weren't in the city when the planes hit, or when the towers fell, but we were close enough to feel the emotional impact. Going to the city would be different for years. Looking up at skyscrapers for the first time was daunting when I was a kid. On my first trip I noticed a t-shirt in a store listing all the things one shouldn't do to avoid looking like a tourist. Besides “avoid eye contact”, the list advised not to look up at the tall buildings. It took conscious effort but I overcame the temptation. After seeing the towers fall on the news, seeing people engulfed by a gray mass of smoke and rubble that rolled out for blocks swallowing everything in its path, the awareness returned. Subway tunnels became daunting as well.

It's hard to grasp the notion that things like this happen all the time in the world, that geographic proximity or personal connections to victims makes us “too sensitive”. I realize I've probably written about all of this at one time or another in the past, and it’s not something I like to revisit. Darrell posted a trailer a few days ago for the World Trade Center movie, and that brought me right back to five years ago. Five years--! In that time I've been back to the city plenty of times, and don't notice airplanes anymore. Slowly life does go back to normal. But the nightmare was real. It did happen. In the trailer I see shots of the shadow of a plane soaring over buildings. I see police officers and fire fighters in the lobby of the towers as they crumble. That one shot chills me to the bone. There was plenty of footage of the collapse from the outside, but placing us inside brings home the horror of it all once again. I read the message boards about the movie after seeing Darrell's post and found myself alternately sad and angry. I couldn't believe all the “get over it” and “who cares?” comments. One poster asked, “Isn't the world bored already?” Five years isn't that long ago, and seems like less. I remember the humanity and unity in the days following the attack, the uncharacteristic brotherhood of New Yorkers helping each other, dissolving stereotypes of crime and rudeness. Countries around the world showed their support, a French Newspaper declaring, “We are all Americans.” How much has changed since then? Conspiracy theories run rampant as documentaries like Loose Change posit the demolition of the towers by our own government, picking and choosing quotes and footage to support the theory and create a very plausible tale with dubious science that is easily refuted. Worst of all, I came across people citing casualty numbers and point out how there have been worse tragedies and more lives lost in wars. It all brought back my guilt over my initial hope that it was “only” a small plane and a few people. Even one untimely demise is a tragedy.

I'm torn about World Trade Center the movie. In some respects, “too soon” is still my gut feeling. Even with 10% of the profit going to charity, it's still dramatizing a very real and very recent tragedy. If the trailer and various reviews are any indication though, it may be a very real and unbiased account of the events. I don't think I'll see it in theaters, see the recreation of something one of my cousins and others I know saw firsthand. Where was I? I saw it on television. I wasn't there. I was an hour's drive from there. Maybe for some people, it's not too soon. For people outside of New York, these events are as distant and dismissible as all the wars and other disasters in the world that have been distant and dismissible to me. Only when I couldn't change the channel was I forced to see. Maybe this is an important movie and people need to see it. Some are set in their opinions, and may not change, while others will be slammed by a very necessary reminder. It's ironic that when the media chooses to focus on some drunk driver, we need to go to the movie theater to revisit something sad, tragic and significant. The trailer alone sent me back to where I was five years ago. Where were you?