9/11

It's 9/11 today and also falling on a Tuesday like that day in 2001. I like the idea of everyone doing something good for someone today more than the ceremonies and memorials and such. So I think that is what I'm going to try to do.

Where were you on 9/11?

It was my second day of work at my new job in the big city after moving to Chicago. In the elevator I heard someone talking about it but it didn't hit until after I got to work. My co-worker from New York was listening in horror to the radio at full blast down in the basement where we worked. We listened for about 30 minutes until after the buildings fell then decided to get the hell out of there once we heard threats of the Sears Tower getting hit. This was also when the false reports of car bombs going off and stuff in front of buildings around Washington, etc.

I ran full out with 500,000 of my closest Chicagoans also pouring out of buildings to the EL trains. On the ride home people were crying and giving updates from their cell phones (those that worked) to everyone and kinda generally just coming together when normally people are silent and want to be left alone on the train. theMan picked me up and we raced home and spent the entire rest of the day on the couch with our roommates glued to the TV. Switching back and forth to the international stations to get details that American TV wasn't showing (people falling out of the buildings, etc) to get more of the story. I vividly remember newscasters crying and how eerily quiet it was without the airplanes going back and forth from O'Hare over our apartment. The phones were all out too. I'm not even sure if we ate that day.

Sadly, where I sit 6 years later I firmly believe more and more that things are not what they seemed that day. I believe that the entire thing reeks of controversy and lies. Whether I can prove anything remains to be seen, but I do know from that day forward I have had no trust in our government and leaders. None. I've only felt sadness. Those leaders should spend the rest of their mortal days serving others in a soup kitchen in the worst parts of the world and sleep on a cot in a jail cell at night.

Large numbers of people die everyday around the world, sure, but what really hit me about the entire thing was how our freedom, our sense of security went away so fast and how our government used it to make us fear absolutely everything and give away our rights. For that they should have to face a choice of burning to death or jumping out of buildings on fire while we look on from the comfort of our living rooms in horror.