I saw the video of the first plane minutes after it happened, and my brain said: “How does a jet get that far off course.” This was followed by, “Somebody did this intentionally!” While these were zipping by, the second plane hit. A short time later, the first tower fell, and then the second.
My officemates stood, and we all watched on a little black-and-white TV. I remember thinking that it was the same model TV as I took to college with me, twenty years ago, like a touchstone to the world as it was, and could never be again. And when the towers fell, I was stunned; how do you comprehend something on this scale?
It seemed unreal, like a movie effect. Fake. And part of my brain said, “Hey, I’ve seen better special effects.”
When did it come real for me? There was video footage from a regular Joe, a vidcam report, of said unwilling guy stuck in the streets of New York, running. Like a million times that I have accidentally left my vidcam running, and gotten twenty minutes of what my family calls “foot shots”, the camera bumped along at high speed, showing running feet, but recording the sounds…the gusts, the heavy breaths, the panic. Said videographer ducked into a lunch counter, and helped a panicky mom joggle a toddler’s stroller through the door. And then we heard, “It’s coming!”
The camera swiveled up, and shot the window of the luncheonette. And then, a dark black cloud of dust, dirt, and evil went by, like a breath from Hell, turning day into night. It…seethed, flowed, engulfed, and obliterated. You could see it move from left to right, a curtain closing on who we were.
Never forget. We have lost a lot of who we were that day. We’ve been soothed and coddled by a petulant word that wants us to believe that somehow America “got what she deserved” for being just a little too big, too powerful, too strong. “Don’t get upset, America”, we were told. “Just go back to sleep.”
Nope. America is just what it always was, the leader of the world. We were not the aggressors. We did not begin it. But the lives of almost 3000 innocent people were snuffed out by 19 petty little thugs, for the simple crime of going into work to support their loved ones. We were angry that day. I pray we stay angry as long as it takes to drag the world back into the glorious sunlight.