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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
"Oh, it started before 9. The casualties will be investment bankers."
-- Name withheld, on a first thought noting that banking is one of the few professions in NYC that gets going before 9 a.m.
My husband, a rather spiritual and caring person, truth be told, was incredibly pissed at how the reaction to the attacks messed up sports for the next week. Florida (his team) was supposed to play Tennessee in football the next weekend. It was, of course, canceled, and played closer to the end of the season. Florida lost, and lost the chance to be national champions as a result.
He's convinced that if they'd played Tennessee when they were supposed to, they would have won ... yada yada. He still talks about it.
-- Name withheld
When the towers started collapsing and all chaos broke loose, I felt actual excitement. Here was an event that broke banality. Finally, here was something meaningful. I had grown so tired of the meaningless fluff our continent had become so enamored with. Here was an issue of raw emotions. I was glad that this was happening to snap people back into reality, to snap them back to mortality. My last sinful thought was that of genocide -- lets just send nuclear missiles to all of the Middle East and let it be done once and for all.
-- Name withheld
9/11 was three days before my wedding on 9/14. Honestly, my first selfish thought upon learning that all the airports would be closed until further notice was, now my mom and the rest of my family would not be able to attend. We held the wedding anyway, with half the guests, and no one felt like dancing or celebrating.
I still feel a little used by that, especially since my first anniversary will be eclipsed by one-year later specials and flag wavers.
-- Aubrey Wilder, 25
On 9/11/01, I just kept going out to stare up at the sky. It was so quiet and empty -- and yes, actually beautiful -- without jets and vapor trails everywhere. What corner of Antarctica will I have to visit to to see another completely empty sky from horizon to horizon?
-- Name withheld
As a good Oberlin College alumni, I was horrified by my own cowardice in the face of 9/11 and its fallout. I wanted to be safe, at any cost. I thought that maybe me and my progressive friends had it wrong, had always had everything wrong, that we should go forth and bomb and destroy and invade and do whatever necessary to guard "our way of life," a phrase I have always hated.
Also, in thinking about the possible end of the world, one of the thoughts I was most upset by went something like this: "FUCK. If we're all barricaded in bunkers we won't be able to go to the movies anymore."
-- Lisa B., 34, writer and professor
I played the part, of course; I expressed the mandatory shock, outrage and sadness while watching events unfold with co-workers. I was, in outward appearence, the very picture of solemnity and sympathy. Inside, though, I was excited. I got the same weird sense of roller-coaster joy I do when a hurricane comes up the coast or a blizzard shuts down the city. In the chaos of the initial reports, I found myself disappointed to find out that some of the early reports of additional targets being hit were erroneous.
As the second tower collapsed, I found myself with a terrible sense of satisfaction. It was almost like, somewhere deep in the parts of my soul that don't see the sun, I was rooting for the event to be even bigger -- for it to cut so deeply through the banality of daily life, that things would never be the same. I suspect I am not alone. Whether it's shark attacks, wars, school shootings or child abductions, something in human nature gives people a sick thrill in such horrific voyeurism. That's what drives the infotainment industry we like to call the nightly news. In the Civil War, spectators went out to watch the battle.
Until fairly recently, watching public executions was regular entertainment for the masses. Few have the guts to admit it publicly, but we're all monsters.
-- Michael Middleton
I was an EMT at the time as well, and I remember the frustration and rage at how the Emergency Medical Technicians were getting nothing in the way of kudos or hero worship or anything. No, it was firemen-this and firemen-that and think of all those poor lost firemen. Statues and commemorations and speeches, lord the speeches -- EMTs and firemen are two very different beasts!
Stop mentioning just the one of them! I'm sick and tired of the goddamn heroic firemen! In the secret depths of my soul, I think they get all the attention because they have spiffier uniforms.
-- Katharine, college student, Bryn Mawr, Pa.
