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September 11th Part 3
Three years ago today was a Tuesday. A beautiful day. My dad and I had went out for breakfast together. The little diner we were at had a TV and it was the Today show.
I noticed everyone (or so it seemed) to be watching the TV. Quite unusual as most of the time the TV was just sort of background noise. We got up and went to see what was happening.
It looked like a tall building was on fire or getting ready to fall. Then we gathered that a plane had hit one of the twin towers in NYC. The first thing that I said was that it had to be terriorist. (why that popped out of my mouth I have no idea) This man turned and looked at me, I said "well look how many planes fly over them for all these years. Surely no plane would accidently fly into one of them."
Dad paid our bill and we went back to the house. Mom was glued to the TV. She said do you know what is going on? Yea, we saw at the diner. Just then we saw the 2nd plane hit.
At that time my brother walked in. He had no idea what was going on (as he had just driven to town from his house -- about an hour away). When it hit him he started to freak. I am like what is wrong with you? His wife had been out of state and was due to take a bus to come home that day. He was worried about her traveling.
I remember there not being anything on TV for what seemed like ages except all this madness. Now I am not trying to make light of the situation, I was upset over what had happened but it still felt like it was a world away from me. The more I saw on TV the more depressed I got. So I went to a movie. The pre-view was of the Spiderman movie that was soon to come out. And it showed a helicopter (I think) crashing into the Twin Towers. (shortly after that the trailer was yanked).
I go home feeling even more depressed. The news people on the tube say not to watch so much of what is happening as it was affecting people (I for one was losing sleep and being just a real b****). So I flipped channels. There was nothing else on the TV. Not the shopping channels, not the music channels, no place. Finally one of the cartoon channels come back on.
That is when I a 40something adult started watching cartoons again. I found them to be relaxing and it took my mind off things. To this day I will watch about 30 minutes or so of cartoons before I go to bed at night.
Because I live in North Carolina the change of the New York sky line wasn't something that I could grasp. It didn't affect me. But something else did. Something that to this day I remember and will until I die.
I looked up in the sky and there were no planes. There were no streaks in the sky that planes leave behind. It was so weird. It scared me. For me, that is what most impacted me. I cry when I see the towers fall, but the memory of what I could see in my little part of the world is what hurts me the most. Now that may sound weird to most of you and you may not understand. And you may think how can something not showing up in the sky hurt more than all those people dying. I have no answer for you. I don't know. I know that 9-11 affected everyone in different ways. That is how it affected me.
onestrangecat at 4:48:00 PM EDT Blog about this entry |
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Oh, I understand. It was very odd not having the planes across the sky. I said I would never fly again. But I flew to San Antonio. This was beautifully written. You are a very good writer.
Sonya -
I hear of people mentioning noticing no planes on this day a lot. It was the same for me. It was an erie feeling when you noticed there were no planes in the sky. But what I just noticed, this moment, while reading your entry, is that we ALSO don't really noticed the planes when they ARE in the sky, we are so used to them, unless they make sound then we "look up" and notice. So I find it interesting that we ALL noticed the LACK of the planes on this day. I guess being so used to them, especially here in OKC near an Air Force Base, we are accoustom to them so when they weren't there is was more noticable. I think I remember the niose of the fighter planes taking off, interrupting that silence, scaring the poopie out of us here too!
Oh well, my comment ended up being a "ramble" but I find everyones entries for this day touching and sad at the same time. Thank you for yours.
Cheryl
http://journals.aol.com/dvlwitgrneyes/Fortysomething/ -
The graphic is stunning and is truly touches all emotions of the that time in our history. Thank your for remembering.
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I know how you felt about the effect of the empty sky...that was something you could see first hand, an effect it had on your world. You coulddn't see the changes in NYC or the whole in the ground in Pennsylvania or the destruction at the Pentagon...but the empty sky was a deafening reminder of the horrible thing that had happened to this country.
I'm glad you chose the first graphic that also had the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania site. I think that too often 911 graphics only depict the Twin Towers, there just don't seem to be enough of them that include all three locations where those planes went down.
Thanks {{{{{ Kathy }}}}}
Vivian
9/8/06 8:36 PM
I turned the TV on and screamed......GET THE KIDS. My grandchildren were in school. In my mind, more planes were going to hit more places. I felt it but I didn't know how many. She looked at me as if I was crazy and I shouted again......GET THE KIDS. She then knew I meant business. All the parents were getting their children once she got to the school. People were crying everywhere. I called my son in New Hampshire. He was a NYC police officer a few years before and in the sound of his voice, I could hear the pain and the desire to run to the Twin towers and help. I can feel every feeling and remember every sight that day and it won't go away. The towers are now gone forever but, after they fell, all I could do was count in my head how many people would die and I was close. I knew by the time of day, the buildings would have been full by 10:00 AM. That's how Wall Street is. Thankfully, the terrorists didn't know that 55,000 people would have been in those buildings an hour later than when they hit with the first plane and even the second. My guess on the dead was only about 100 off. I wish I was 3000 off and nobody died but that was impossible.
Angela