The Wrath of Dawn
Eight years ago today around this time, I was in the costume bank of one of the local theatres, being fitted for a hat and picking out jewellery as parts of a costume I was to wear in a musical that was opening that weekend. They had a small portable TV there and it was tuned, like nearly every other TV in North America to the events in NYC. How incredibly surreal it was to be playing dress-up while thousands of people were dying. We do mundane things every day of life while others die, but the difference was I KNEW ABOUT IT.
Immediately after that, I did what I am doing now. Home for lunch, trolling the internets. But thankfully, today I am looking for LOLZ and LMAOZ, not nervously trying to ascertain if we are on the brink of WWIII and talking myself down from full-blown panic at the thought. And for that, I am very, very grateful.
I realize that part of what made 9/11/8101 so incredibly traumatic for those of us in North America was that it's one of the very few events of its kind in living memory in this part of the world. Mostly wars and terrorist attacks have happened elsewhere. And for that I am also very, very grateful. Not that I think you would ever get used to such a thing, but I think the shock might be a bit less.
Say an extra little prayer today for those lost in NYC, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon and those who lost them, if you're the praying type.
Immediately after that, I did what I am doing now. Home for lunch, trolling the internets. But thankfully, today I am looking for LOLZ and LMAOZ, not nervously trying to ascertain if we are on the brink of WWIII and talking myself down from full-blown panic at the thought. And for that, I am very, very grateful.
I realize that part of what made 9/11/
Say an extra little prayer today for those lost in NYC, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon and those who lost them, if you're the praying type.
Posted by WrathofDawn at 2:07 p.m.
5 Comments:
Today has been a pensive day - '9/11' is a day that I will never forget either, along with so many others.
Bored at work, I logged onto LonelyPlanet and suddenly started seeing these threads pop up saying things like 'WTF?', 'The Tower's Gone Down' etc etc. I rushed home at lunch time, told the kids to turn the TV on to CNN (no other channel would be screening it...) with barely one foot through the door.
I sat there and watched the afternoon unfold, live, on my TV whilst save over here in Belgium.
America and all those who lost friends and family from the disaster, I thought of you today.
I was at work when someone came in around 9am and said she'd heard on the radio that a plane had gone into one of the towers. I tried CNN online. Believe it or not, I actually got on after two tries. And saw. The three staff in our office decided to go to someone's house to watch it on tv while I 'watched the phones.' I called my friend who did business in Manhatten, right at ground zero, as it happened. Luckily, he wasn't there - he wasn't sceduled to go that week. I then called my boss, and started the process of tracking some of our management team as they were in the states on business. We had a broker in Brooklyn, and thankfully their son was OK, after walking home across the Brooklyn Bridge with a million other people.
Went home for lunch, saw even more on tv. By that point it was starting up everywhere...from CNN, to A&E, to Discovery, etc. There were no boundaries - every channel starting airing stuff. And for the first time in my little Gen X life, I seriously considered that we might be on the brink of another World War.
Why 9/11/81?
I was moving computers around at work after term start had to be delayed by two weeks for building works to finish. I had the radio on and misheard the broadcast as "smoke coming out of the tyres" and thought it was some motor racing incident.
81? EIGHTY-ONE???
I blame TEH MENTALPAUSE.
I blame the cat's paws.
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