6 Years Ago

I haven't ever done a "where were you when...?" entry about September 11th, or any event for that matter.

So now's the time.

Where were you when "it" happened?

Where were you when:

• you first realized what exactly was happening?
• it sunk in that it wasn't a stupid drunken idiot hitting the twin towers with a small one person plane?
• TV showed the towers collapsing?
• you saw Bush sitting there with that stunned look on his face instead of getting off his ass and running the country?
• you felt uncertainty for what the future will hold?

I was at work at the old ad agency and got a phone call from a photographer saying what had happened and we all went out to the lobby of the building to see the news on the teeny TV set that Dan (the pizza man as we called him) had in his little area.

We were all stunned and didn't know what was going to happen.

I was nervous. My boss closed the shop up early and I went directly to my (at the time) girlfriend's place to "make sure she was ok". Of course she'd be ok.

And I remember the headlines in the paper the next day. The world was different somehow even though it was the same. I remember everyone buying an American flag to
"stick it to the enemy" (how silly was that idea?? It was like: "I'm MAD and to show you, I'm gonna just head over to Wal-Mart and buy a flag.") Soon thereafter, some Arab guy accepted the blame and we were invading an area "over there" to make us "safer" in America. We had to. It was what we all thought.

Now I am not getting on a soap box and placing blame or anything. I hope not, anyway. I can say that I am a different person than I was then. Less idealistic; less optimistic; less sure of the future. Probably not a better person.

Yeah, I live in Germany now. Yeah, I have lived here for a while. But I can say that even they feel it here too. The world has changed, even if it's not entirely the way we thought it would.

So blah blah blah...what point am I trying to make?

No point. Just reflecting back to where we were and maybe you can as yourself if you have become a better person since then. Even in a small way.

I think America will always use September 11th as a marker. Maybe the way I have used when the Challenger exploded back in 1986. I was in 7th grade. I remember so clearly.

And I don't ever want to forget.

And, thanks to political gain, as well as propaganda, I never will.