Remembering 9/11

[over the mountain]

I was in my first year of law school in san diego. had a small apartment downtown on top of a hill. the airport in san diego is right next to downtown so my apartment was literally right next to/under the flight path for planes landing.

when the planes flew by I could see the bolts, whether there was a blond or brunnette sitting in the window, the planes shook my apartment everytime a plane flew by, you had to put calls on hold b/c you couldnt talk on the phone fromt he noise.

a plane passed my apartment probabaly once every 3-7 mins. domestic planes flew regularly from aoubt 5 am to 10 pm. after that only international planes.

on 9/11 around 6ish am i am dead asleep. my phone is ringing, i dont answer it. phone rings again, i dont answer it. thrid time i pick up the phone and scream a profanity laced tirade. it was my brother from the DC area. he said some things aobut a plane and towers, i cursed some more, he said just turn on the tv.

im lying in bed, trying to go to sleep, trying to decipher what he was saying in my morning daze. i then dont hear any planes go by. this was strange.

turn on the tv, the rest is history. went to my morning class, we had a discussion session, school was closed for the rest of the day.

went to a dive bar, got drunk, talked with a guy on a business trip from NYC, saw all the cops on every street corner.

[ArtMonkDrillz]

It's weird how much I remember about that whole day and now it totally makes sense when I hear people say they remember every detail of the day Kennedy/MLK/etc was shot or Pearl Harbor was attacked. It was so surreal watching everything unfold on CNN and I still get teary eyed thinking about it all. (sorry for the impending mega-post)

I was a sophomore in college and my professor showed up a few minutes late to a 9am criminology class. He apologized and said he had been glued to the computer reading about a plane flying into the WTC. He didn't have many details and I kind of assumed it was a Cessna or something that got out of control and had an accident. It wasn't til I got back to my dorm that and turned on the TV that I saw what was really going on. I couldn't believe my eyes, especially when I saw the clip of the second plane hitting. It looked like something out of a movie.
A little later I went to a 10:30 class but was only there for a few minutes before someone stopped in and said the school was closing for the day. That professor later apologized to us for even beginning his lecture that morning but I didn't blame him since it was all so crazy.

Later that night there was an impromptu candle light vigil in one of the campus squares, and I can't even write about that now without getting big tears in my eyes. Throughout the day I was happy to hear that my loved ones in the military (including a cousin who had just started working at the Pentagon a few weeks prior) were okay but I knew others weren't so lucky.

I had to fly to Denver around Sept 20th, right after flights resumed, and that was pretty interesting. I wasn't that scared for myself but I was really nervous that my mom, sister, and grandmother were all on an earlier flight that day, so I worried about them. I sat next to my dad and he refused to buckle his seat belt as he gave the evil eye to anyone who got up.

I wouldn't say things are completely normal now but it's strange to think what we've all gotten used to. Now I get annoyed if I go to a baseball game and I feel like they're not doing a good job of checking people when they enter, and I'm always on the look-out for suspicious stuff when I'm on Metro. Next year with the 10th anniversary it's going to be even more intense.