According to my parents, everyone in America remembers where they were on both November 22, 1963 as well as July 21, 1969. Those were some pretty significant moments in the history of this country, I’m sure if I had ever asked my grandparents where any of them were on December 7, 1941, they would have instantly been able to recall their situations. The first similar moment I can remember was on April 19, 1995 when I was sitting in Freshman Health and an announcement was made that teachers could turn on the televisions. Mrs. Dunham did, and we all got to witness the aftermath of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Six years later, I would become witness to the most destructive act of terrorism on United States soil and I, like every other American on planet Earth can remember exactly where I was that day, and what I did. So, this is my account of how I lived that day and how it affected me.
In the fall of 2001 I found myself recently back in
Indiana after a failed attempt to live in California. I was jobless, and going through the first of
many claims of “I’ll never take another movie theatre job again.”
(By December was proven false, when I was offered two
different jobs and chose the one on the south side of town, due to the girl I
was dating at the time. Granted, it was
probably the better job, and I love the friends I made over my five years
there, but as far as my reasoning went, we all know how poorly that turned out.)
I was living up my youth by living at home with my
parents, lounging around the Castleton Arts theatre, getting the Broad Ripple
scene out of my system, and endlessly playing pool with Zach all night at P.S.
O’Rourke’s. It was a pathetic blur of an
existence, and I can’t even seem to recall how I would make ends meet. I’m sure my parents were covering my bills,
and I know Zach took good care of me while we were hanging out.
For me, the morning of September 11th started
a few minutes before 9:00am, when I got up to use the bathroom, and when I
walked out, I noticed the television was on.
This was an odd occurrence, seeing how both of my parents should have
been at work and my brother at school. I
entered the living room, saw no one, and called out, “Hello?”
My brother popped his head over the railing of the loft
and informed me that there was testing going on at school, and he wasn’t to
report until 11:00am. I glanced at the
TV and saw a building on fire, but without my contacts in, I couldn’t read the
captions or process what I was seeing. I
just assumed it was some movie that Scott had on. I didn’t pay attention to the words of the
newscasters, as my only goal was to get a few more hours of sleep.
So, I went back into my room, crawled back under my
covers, and turned on WZPL to listen to the morning show as I went back to
dreamland. It was at this time that I
began to discern comments about a plane crashing into the World Trade
Center. It took a solid minute for these
words to actual sink into my brain and for it completely process into fact. At 9:01am, I put on my glasses and rushed
back into the living room, yelling at my brother, “Hey! Do you know what’s
going on?”
I looked up to the loft and saw him standing in the same
place he was two minutes ago when we were talking, blankly staring down at the
television. I remember my eyes looking
up at him, and then back down into the living room at the exact minute that the
second plane hit the South Tower. I sat
down on the couch, with my eyes glued to the television. I don’t remember how, but suddenly my brother
was sitting next to me and we made that couch our home base for at least the
next four hours.
Like the majority of America, we were fixated on the
television and the information coming in.
Everything so far had been so surreal, was this all really
happening? Suddenly, there were reports
of the Pentagon being hit, and minutes later there was live coverage of it
burning. At that moment, it became clear
that we were under attack in a way no one ever could have seen coming. By the time the reports of the plane crash in
Pennsylvania came in, it was almost impossible to feel shocked anymore.
Scott and I eventually watched in complete disbelief as
the first tower collapsed, followed by the second. Even while the buildings were burning, I had
never considered the possibility that they would fall. They were hit so high up, that I believed the
base structure would remain intact – well, I was proven terribly wrong.
In this modern digital media technology age, it’s hard to
remember the fact that I watched every minute of this live on television and
listened to the radio a lot that day. I
didn’t have Twitter to follow or a Facebook newsfeed to get me the latest
news. I was at the mercy of whatever
channel of news I was watching, local, CNN, MSNBC, whatever. I knew there was a lot of channel surfing
going on, to make sure that one network wasn’t scooping something that the
others were missing.
Around noon, I received a phone call from Jason L.
Maier. The vast majority of my days were
spent hanging out with him at Castleton Arts, while we talked movies and ideas
for scripts. If I’m not mistaken, at
this point we were kicking around ideas for a “Consternate” sequel. (What else were we going to do?) Jason’s phone call was to let me know that
Castleton Arts was going to be closed that day.
Dione had called him and asked him to make sure I knew this, so that I
didn’t show up that afternoon – like I did almost every single day, even if
Jason wasn’t working. So, I wasn’t going
to be spending any part of the day there.
My memory is a little hazy on my parents. I’m pretty sure my mother’s work closed down
early and sent people home, and the fact that my father works in a government
building makes me believe that I remember them being evacuated at some
point. Nonetheless, by mid-afternoon, I
know my entire family was sitting together in the living room, watching the news
coverage. By that point, there really wasn’t
any new information – as the attacks were over – but rather, we were in awe of
the aftermath and the destruction.
Later on in the afternoon, I was sitting on the floor of
my bedroom, listening to WZPL and they had already taken audio bites from that
morning and cut them together with various songs. Most memorable to me was Collective Soul’s “The
World I Know” – which specifically mentions walking around the streets of New
York City. I am certain that buried in a
box in my parent’s basement is cassette tape that recorded that afternoon of
many of these songs. Days later, they
made them all available as MP3 downloads on their website, which I snagged them
all and burnt a CD titled “9/11 Tribute Songs” which is in a box with all of my
other CDs. I got that CD out today
(Saturday) and started listening to it.
It brought back a lot of memories and emotions, listening to the voices
of reporters, callers, and emergency workers.
Here is the track listening for the songs that had dialogue spliced in
with them:
1. Faith
Hill – Star Spangled Banner
2. Lee
Greenwood – Proud to be an American
3. Collective
Soul – The World I Know
4. Live –
Overcome
5. John
Lennon – Imagine
6. U2 –
Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
7. Enya –
Only Time
8. Jewel
– Hands
9. Sarah
McLachlan – Angel
10. Blessid
Union of Souls – I Believe
11. U2 –
Peace on Earth
12. Eric
Clapton – Tears in Heaven
13. Sarah
McLachlan – I Will Remember You
There is also a fourteenth track, which is all
instrumental, and sounds very familiar to me, but I can’t place it. I’m thinking John Williams of Hans Zimmer,
but I don’t know for a fact. The last
track is very dialogue heavy, so it makes it a little more difficult to figure
out. I’ve actually ripped all fourteen
of these track and placed them in a public folder on Google Docs. You can go and download them all RIGHT HERE.
Sometime after dinner, Zach hit me up and asked if I
wanted to go to P.S. O’Rourke’s.
Basically, the entire world had shut down. The movie theatres were closed, the mall was
closed, and almost every business was closed.
So, when he asked I was reluctant, assuming that they too would be
closed.
“If nothing else, I just need to get out of the house and
drive around,” Zach said to me, and that was enough of a selling point that I
was game to take a break from the mass media frenzy and get some fresh
air. So, the teal green Dodge Shadow
rolled down the street, picked me up, and whisked me away to the land of P.S. O’Rourke’s. There were barely any other cars on the
street, it was almost like a scene from an apocalyptic film. Castleton was dead silent, and I don’t recall
ever seeing the mall parking lot so barren.
When we finally pulled up to P.S. O’Rourke’s, there were almost no
indicators that the place was open, but when I jumped out of the car, I was
shocked as I pulled the door and it swung open.
Inside we found Sloan and only two other patrons. When we asked Sloan why he went ahead and
opened the bar, his response was simple enough, “This is where I want to be,
and I want to give other people a place to gather with me.”
We sat and talked, we played some pool, and after 8:30pm,
a few more regulars had strolled in and about ten of us were all sitting at the
bar, watching George W. Bush give his speech on the tragic events of the day.
I woke up on September 12th with a passionate
rage going on inside of me. I swore up
and down that I was going to join the Army.
I was going to go out on the front lines and kill as many “bad guys” as
I could in retaliation. As I said, I was
a jobless twenty-one year old wayward soul with no direction in life who had
just recently been forced to give up on his dreams. What else was I going to do? I had no job, no girlfriend, and no passion
to do anything else. Suddenly, I was
consumed with this desire to follow in the footsteps of my father and
grandfathers, and serve our country. In the
end, I never followed through with it. Some
days I wish that I had, just to have saved me from so many terrible emotions
over the past ten years. However, I also
look at the fact that I would not know many of my closest friends that I have
right now. It’s a terrible Catch-22,
that I can never possibly know which path would have been the better one. But, I do regret never making the decision to
serve my country, like so many of my family members did before me.
Over the next few weeks, I collected a number of
newspapers, magazines, and comics to remember the tragic events of that
day. I had political views, pop culture
views, and sports-related views. Until recently, none of these magazine have seen the light of day. They have been sealed in a manilla envelope that was placed in my parent's safe and only recently removed.
I remember the impact that the event had on Hollywood,
and the two major poster changes that resulted.
First was “Sidewalks of New York”, which originally had the twin towers
in the background. Second was the teaser
poster for “Spider-Man” which originally showed the towers reflecting in
Spider-man’s eyes. I need to double
check, but I believe I still have a copy of this poster in my collection at my
parent’s house.
I also remember the original teaser trailer for "Spider-Man" in 2001, which was very quickly pulled from theatres on September 12th.
I remember being outraged when I heard the film “Serendipity”
was going to digitally remove the twin towers from the film. Personally, I found that to be distasteful to
the memory of the buildings, and erasing them from a period of time when they
did exist was ludicrous. I was very
happy that Cameron Crowe refused to remove them from his film “Vanilla Sky”,
and to this day I enjoy seeing the towers in the opening credits and
establishing shots of the TV series “Friends” as well as in the film “Home
Alone 2: Lost in New York”, which I watch more than once during the holiday
season.
If memory serves me properly (which I don’t count on
these days), My brother visited New York City a number of times before he
started getting the itch to move there.
Eventually, by 2006, through some mutual friends and connections, he was
able to move in with Jason’s future wife Letha for an extended period of time,
allowing him to live in a city that he was very passionate about. I’m not sure how much the impact of September
11th had on him and his love for the city, but it was definitely there,
and it was nice to see him get to live out that dream. I did not get to take my first trip to New
York City until 2006, and to this day it is always going to be a regret of mine
that I never got to stand at the base of the towers and look up at them to see
them curve. As a child, it was one of
those things that I always knew I would get to do one. Like going to the Walk of Fame, or the Arch,
or Times Square, or walking the Tower Bridge in London. In my youth, I never imagined a day when I
couldn’t finally go see the towers. My second trip to NYC was during Christmastime of 2006, and one day while Letha was at work, Jason was able to take me
down to the site, we were only able to stand outside of fencing, and look into a
giant empty pit, where two massive buildings once stood. It was a moment of disappoint, that was put
into perspective as I realized that I was standing where thousands of people’s
lives were ended. It was a very eerie
feeling. As we walked around lower Manhattan, on our way to the Statue of Liberty, we ended up passing by a memorial which included a piece that was recovered from the lobby of Tower Two.
I hate and loathe Brett Favre, because of the media. I despise Tickle Me Elmo, because of the
media. By 2008, I was sick and tired of
the yearly media coverage of September 11th. In no way was attempting to dishonor
everything that happened, I merely felt that the media – and by this time
social networking – were abusing the entire situation, and only spinning it all
for personal gain. In a society that claimed they were trying to protect people, it felt like they were picking at, and tearing open a scab each and every year. The media acted like they wanted to help people deal with their loss, by annually rubbing it in their faces and making a mass spectacle of the recurring situation. I was over-saturated with it all. Therefore, when I got
my tax return and planned my vacation, I specifically chose to be out of the United
States, and in England on September 11th, hoping that I would be far
removed from the media coverage that I so despised at the time. This decision ultimately resulted in a huge
backfire. Fire, I woke up on the morning
of September 11th, 2008 and turned on BBC News to find them talking
about… The seven year anniversary of the
attacks. I rushed out of my hotel to
enjoy what was supposed to be my last day in London. The next morning I was on the Chunnel from
St. George’s Cross to Paris. I ended up
in a pub for lunch, and hoped to catch some football or rugby, only to find
more news coverage. As I waited for my
food, I lamented to my bartender about how I was attempting to escape all of
this media, by coming to Europe. I
explained that I didn’t know they would be featuring it so heavily in their
country. By midday on this September 11th,
something else began creeping into news coverage. One of the trains from Paris, coming into
England via the Chunnel caught fire, which essentially shut down the Chunnel
for the next 48 hours. IN THIS ARTICLE,
it mentions the 30,000 travelers who were stranded because of this, I was one
of them. Thousands of people were taking
buses and trains to Dover, in an attempt to take crowded ferries across. It was an uncertain fate that I was not
willing to gamble with. If I had larger
funds available to me, to spend multiple nights in Dover, or stranded in
France, I may have shrugged my shoulders and go on an adventure. However, being on a tight budget, and only
plans for one night in Paris before moving onto Munich, it threw my entire
vacation into disarray and I eventually flew straight back to the United States
from London two days later. I chalk the entire experience up to "cosmic irony". God (Or Gods, or High Powers, or Supreme Beings, or whatever you believe in) was trying to make a point to me that day: I took that vacation for the wrong reason, and I deserved to be personally affected for my escapist intentions.
Earlier this year, I read the novel “Love
Monkey”, written by Kyle Smith, it was the basis of a TV show that I really enjoyed,
so I always wanted to read the book, and I finally ran across a copy at
Half-Priced Books. Aside from the fact
that the television show was a vast departure from the original novel, there
was a chapter late in the semi-autobiographical book that dealt with events of
September 11th. I don’t know
how much is fact, and how much Mr. Smith embellished for the narrative, but
nonetheless it was a fascinating read of what the main character went through
on that day, as he attempted to get a hold of his friends, after standing on a
street corner in lower Manhattan and watching the buildings collapse in front
of him. As a reader, I got the feeling
that Kyle Smith actually lived something similar to what Tom Ferrell went
through in the novel, as it was told with such detail and emotion. (And I do know that Kyle Smith has been a
long time resident in NYC).
Tonight, I sit here on the eve of the tenth
anniversary. I’ve spent the last four
days writing this article, which I hope someone actually takes the time to
read, and perhaps enjoy this one tale of where I was when my generation changed
forever. I did not know anyone who was
killed on that day. I didn’t have any
friends that I was worrying over. I’m
not constantly haunted by the images depicting the demise of a friend or
relative. So, when I sit here and
imagine how much my life was changed ten years ago, I can’t even begin to
imagine what tomorrow is going to be like for those whose lives where directly impacted and forever altered because of the terrorist’s actions that morning.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years. It's crazy to think about all of the changes in society and security due to the actions of a few men. Life was a lot easier, a lot more simplistic, and honestly a lot more enjoyable back then. The oppression of the government has gone way up and there are thousands of conspiracy theorists nut-jobs coming up with the mast asinine ways to blame our government for everything bad that has happened. The world really isn't a fun place anymore, and maybe it's just a realization that I'm coming to as I've hit thirty, but I do remember how things were before that fateful day.
As I’ve written this, it’s been a very interesting trip down memory lane. Remember where I was in life ten years ago, and looking at everything I’ve done between then and now. Seeing the dreams that I’ve failed, and the new ones that I continue to strive for now.
As I’ve written this, it’s been a very interesting trip down memory lane. Remember where I was in life ten years ago, and looking at everything I’ve done between then and now. Seeing the dreams that I’ve failed, and the new ones that I continue to strive for now.
I will proudly be participating in multiple moments of
silence.
