Just A Journal Entry

It’s September 11th, and exactly six years ago I watched planes crash into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field somewhere in Pennsylvania. I was at Merrill Lynch, and we had televisions everywhere so we could watch CNBC all day. I got to work, and I hadn’t even sat down yet when my boss Kristopher told me somebody had crashed a plane into one of the towers. I remember looking at a TV and seeing the smoke billowing out of the hole. I thought it had been a Cessna or some other small plane because unless you were in New York you couldn’t get a good perspective of how large those two buildings were. I guess it was about ten minutes later when the second jet hit, and I remember thinking that it was just stupid that someone would crash a jet into a building, like it was a bad joke. My brain wouldn’t process the irrationality of the event until someone turned up the volume on the televisions, and I heard what had happened. Then the plane hit the Pentagon and I started feeling helpless, which quickly turned into anger. I don’t like feeling helpless. A girl I worked with – I call her a girl because she was twenty-one, ditzy, and out of college for about eight minutes – was on the verge of breaking down completely and I was trying to console her when she told me her entire family (mom, dad, and 3 or 4 siblings) worked in Washington. This got me thinking about my friends in Washington and New York, so I rushed outside to get a decent signal for my phone. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Jacksonville. For some reason I remember it being crisp – which can’t be right, this is Florida – everything seemed vibrant and it was silent outside the office. Of course I couldn’t get through, so I was stuck doing nothing and knowing nothing. I couldn’t even cal MJ. I don’t really remember anything else from the rest of the day.

I can’t believe it’s six years later. There are little kids who were born that day who are starting first grade. I wonder if being born on September 11, 2001 will be a big deal for them. Is it a big deal for people who were born on December 7, 1941 or is it just a quirk? I have bitter-sweet feelings about how nothing has really changed in my day-to-day life. I haven’t bought any war bonds, I don’t really do a good job at conserving energy, and the biggest problem in my life right now is that the Jaguars can’t put the ball in the endzone. On one hand it bothers me that we didn’t really learn anything; it didn’t make us a better people. On the other hand 9/11 was the all encompassing grand triumph for al Qaeda and we barely noticed. We may not be the best we can be, but we’re much better than they are.