It always amazes me when I thought that I've dealt with something, put it to bed, and can hear about or view a situation with a sort of clinical distance only to find that when actually faced with it, I am still hurt from it.
Tonight, I watched a rerun of NCIS and now have Lie To Me on. It went from an Al Qaeda cell trying to kill a Navy Commander to a construction site catastrophy. The two things in quick succession had me on the verge of tears. It immediately made me go back to 9/11.
It's been nearly 8 years and I'd think that things were a little more removed, a little easier to deal with situations that are similar to those scenes that we all saw.
I remember seeing all the people jumping from the buildings. I remember worrying about my parents. My mom works for SOCOM. My dad works for the FAA. Dad was in NJ already then.
I know that everyone in the country has their story.
I was driving to work. I was on the Mendota Bridge when it first came across the radio that a plane had hit one of the Towers. I remember rolling my eyes and thinking what idiot could miss a skyscraper, assuming that it was a small private plane. A few people injured and probably a few dead from the plane itself. By the time I made it to work, the second plane had hit and people knew that they were airliners. I ran into the office and turned on the TV in the conference room. I yelled for one of the other managers to come in and help me adjust the TV to get a clear channel in. Little by little more people filled the conference room.
Like everyone else in the country, I was glued to the news for days. I knew that my parents probably lost friends, maybe even people I knew. I had coworkers in NYC. It took three weeks to hear from all of them. One month later, I flew in to Newark. The cabbies all had stories. They could see the smoke and the dust.
And here I sit... nearly 8 years later... and it is still fresh.
Sorry. My OCD won.
3 days ago
I was outside of a grocery store. I had an early morning doctor's appointment, and wanted to pick up a gallon of milk before heading home. I heard the initial report, of the first plane, and thought exactly what you did-how could a pilot possibly be that far off? The connection I didn't make was, in retrospect, an obvious one. I live close enough to New York City so that it is somewhat rare that we'll have dramatically different weather. It should have occurred to me that a navigation error, a la the Empire State Building crash, was impossible-it was a gorgeous day.
ReplyDeleteAs I drove home, the second plane hit. I watched TV until I had to leave for work. We didn't have any TVs there, so everything passed by rumor and innuendo. We prepared for a crush of hospital admissions for survivors that, of course, never came.