There's always been a joke among African-Americans about black folks and white folks during a disaster. My father was quick to point out a black woman who had managed to get out of the towers when she was actually on a floor above where the plane hit and she was still trying to get out of downtown when the reporter stopped her.

The fact that tons of white people just stood there near the towers looking before they fell cracked him up. It confirmed the stereotype of white folks never thinking anything is ever going to happen to them. And since black people are used to fucked-up crap happening to them all the time they were trying to get the hell out of there.

Of course I spotted a few African-Americans looking lost. My dad just said that they've been around white people too damn long. Real black folks run.

-- Name withheld

My father was one of those people who was supposed to be in the city that day but didn't go in that morning due to a freak coincidence. I hate him.

I wish he'd died in the attacks, because then memorializing him would have been easy. I wouldn't have ever had to hate him again because he would have been one of the people lost in 9/11. As we waited to get in touch with him, I prayed we'd never find him. No one knows this.

-- Name withheld

What cheeses me off the most about the Sept. 11 attacks is that it gave Americans a newer, better reason to be narcissistic. Before they were just (in their own eyes) the world's No. 1 providers of liberty, entertainment and industry. Now they're the world's No. 1 victims, too.

-- Name withheld

Dubya should write Osama a thank-you note. Remember the campaign slogan "I'm a uniter, not a divider"? Osama got the job done for him.

-- Paul Lorentz

"Well, I guess Gary Condit's relieved."

--overheard by Josh Anderson, 30, Arlington, Va., during the week of 9/11

2001 was a great year for me; I hated the twin towers and I hated the Taliban and now they're both gone!

-- Lesbian feminist from Greenwich Village

I love to watch the footage, over and over. I'm looking forward to the anniversary just because the videos will be played again. People claim they don't like to see the images, but I don't believe it for a second. I was sorry I missed footage of people jumping, because you just don't see that too often and that is rarely replayed.

-- Graphic artist, 41, Chicago

A friend of mine noted, as all the flag bumper stickers and crap started getting slapped up all over houses, cars and work cubbies, that some people weren't even really sticking the stickers on their cars -- they were scotch-taping them to the inside of their car windows. It was as if they knew that their surge of patriotic feeling would fade, and they wouldn't want to be left looking like a hick with the stupid flag sticker left on their car. Totally cynical, but I think that's true.

-- Maggie, Massachusetts

I'll admit my first thought was, Thank God, I won't have to hear [name withheld] bitch about her marriage anymore. Her husband worked in the WTC and they were on the road to a messy divorce. Of course, then I spoke to my friend, who was now the proud widow of a martyr -- and has since claimed full benefits. The hypocrisy of her attitude, especially as she spoke about him in the reverent tone normally reserved for saints when he was once known as TB (short for 'The Bastard'), nearly made me physically ill.

While I no longer associate with her, mutual friends have told me she now claims they had a storybook romance -- sure, if the author is Jackie Collins.

-- Name withheld

The deification of firefighters was the result of guilt. Most white-collar people never think of blue-collar workers at all or dismiss them as insignificant. When yuppies realized that firefighters would brave flames to save their sorry, self-centered lives they suddenly became ridiculously reverential. There is no convert like a new convert.

-- Name withheld, New York

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