So yesterday was the 6 year anniversary of 9/11 and I came across this show, “9/11, As It Happened” on MSNBC. I’m trying not to watch anymore 9/11 stuff. It’s not good. Like watching a car accident only it’s the biggest one EVER.
However, I broke my rule and turned it on because my 9/11 experience was actually spent far away from a TV. I walked into the office and heard about the first plane. Heard about the second plane at the coffee shop. Heard about the Pentagon 2 seconds before I went into class (and I still don’t know why I went to that class because at that point I thought the country was completely under attack- and well, it was). And I saw the towers fall as I walked into my local pizza place.
So I turned on the show and was instantly sucked into the Today Show (love ya, Matt; miss ya, Katie) at around 9:00am on that fateful morning. Of course 9:00am means pre-second plane and it was interesting to experience that world- the one where we still assumed that anything that terrible had to be an accident. The second plane- oh, I knew it was coming and I still almost missed it- the shock was unbelievable and no one knew what to do, what to say.
After that, it got really interesting. Bush gave a speech (I never knew that) and said “we’ll get these guys” but since it came before the crash in Pennsylvania or the Pentagon hit, it had the ring of failure (never mind the fact we still haven’t gotten these guys). The FBI said they “never saw this coming”. The media freely announced the airline and flight numbers of the planes that crashed and all I could think about was the people watching who knew- or maybe worse, suspected their loved ones were on that plane. And then there was the mis-information. People being interviewed on the ground who thought both planes hit one tower or worse, that the second plane was just an explosion in the first tower. These are the things the firefighters thought too. No one knew what was going on.
And the show never mentioned but in passing the heroes of that day. A brief comment here and there about the firemen and police on the scene. No one realized or thought, at least not right away, how many of them were in those towers when they fell. My thoughts are with their families now.
