remembering 9/11

My cousin was working at the Pentagon as a civilian Editor for Stars and Stripes and got injured. After that day she moved her family ASAP to the country in BFE to work for a small rural newspaper in a town no one would care about. I remember waking up hearing Howard Stern on the radio freaking out telling everyone to turn on their TVs because something unimaginably terrible is happening and it was not a joke. Nothing was exactly the same after that day and it got worse sadly. RIP

Such a tragic event that caused so many more deaths post-9/11, truly a dark time for history, many people suffered over the years, including Muslims, but mainly the innocents that were caught in the crossfire between America and Al-qaeda, I wish all of them were granted a swift and painless death. Rest in peace everyone.

I woke up that morning after working four 10 hours shifts from Friday-Monday (gotta love old Verizon Wireless customer service jobs) I rolled out of bed and walked over to my computer. I did my morning routine of turning it on letting it start up and then dialing up to get online. ( High speed DSL/Cable was more of an expensive luxury for most people back then). Got online and went to hang out in the chat rooms (back then kids and some adults hung out in Yahoo/AOL chatrooms alot to see who was doing what and what local news/info they could get faster then buying a newspaper/watching local TV/CNN) While in the chat room someone mentioned a plane crash in New York, someone else said yea they were watching the coverage on TV. I turned on the TV in my room to see it to.(gotta love single guys apartments, PC,TV,Minifrigde,Wok all in one bedroom lol) The smoke billowed out of the top of one of the twin towers and it was considered a horrible accident, how did this happen? The coverage would cut back to the hosts of the day talking about different stuff during the first few minutes as for the first few minutes/hour it was seen as an accident... not an attack. As we were watching and chatting I went downstairs and made a bowl of cereal and came back upstairs to of course hang out in the chatroom and look up some stuff ever slowly online as I watched the TV coverage of the accident occasionally. During a spoon full of co-co puffs, I watched as the 2nd plane flew in lower then the 1st impact site and crashed into the second tower. Ripping through it and incinerating the plane in a flash. I put the cereal down and turned back to the chatroom, it was normal for a moment or two before some people watching it also started saying "Wow a 2nd one" "What the hellz happened?" as those watching TV coverage in the room also saw the second plane hit. Then the hosts on the TV coverage started going into a frenzy and for the next hour or so we watched as the firefighters and police were rushing anyone they could out and soon we watched coverage of people unable to get out of their 60th floor office on the window ledges and jump to their deaths rather then to be burned to ash. By now tons of people in the chat room and eyes around the world were watching the pair of towers as the flames on the 1st tower were so high and going uncontrolled. I sat watching as my cell phone rang, (surprisingly enough with a different carrier. Nokia phone though with a strobe light antenna.) My girlfriend at the time was seeing if i was watching to. She stayed home from class that day sick and was watching TV when it cut to it. Then the cell phone lost the call, I looked down to see not just the call but service to. I tried to call after a few minutes when I saw the service was back back but all circuits were busy. Busy for a while to... By this time the camera is back on the tower and people watching are wondering if it'll burn itself out or tumble... we know what happened. Then a bit later we saw the second tower crumble as well. Reports had been coming in that the Pentagon was attacked that morning to. By that afternoon I had made contact with my girlfriend using my landline phone to see if she's ok... odd I know but with everything happening I had to make sure. When the evening set in the chatrooms talked about how another plane was also hijacked as well but fighter planes intercepted it and shot it down (we know the truth now). My brother came over that afternoon and he like me talked about it... we weren't feeling sad or the tragedy, we felt anger, we felt hatred. It was a trying day for those poor souls in NY, DC, PA. I remember the next day or 2 was coverage of the WTC site was 24hrs. The next 6 years became... interesting for both of us and many of our friends who were also young men of fighting age in my old neighborhood. It's odd talking about it now as it was so vivid back then.