Where were you?

I realize I haven't posted anything new in a long time...sorry. Combination of writer's block, life and other complications certainly intrude on one's writing. I have nearly completed the next installment of Arneb and hope to have it up soon. However, I have decided to interrupt that with my recollections of that terrible morning 7 years ago.


I worked nights at the time, and I lived at home. I had gone to bed around 7:30 am central and was just dozing off when my father threw my door open and told me an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Being half asleep I was like, "Whaaa?" He repeated himself and I realized he was serious. I got up, went downstairs to the living room and was watching the coverage on TV. My Dad and I had been discussing how a plane could have hit the towers when the second plane struck.

We were both shocked into silence and just watched until the reports of the Pentagon being hit started filtering in and then the first tower collapsed. We watched as it fell. Frankly I was only kinda shocked. I had studied Architectural and Structural Engineering in college and given where the planes had hit, I had expected somekind of collapse above the impact zone, but I didn't expect the entire building to go down. After it collapsed, I knew it was just a matter of time until the second tower collapsed. I wasn't watching when that happened because I was on the phone with my boss. I worked at a hotel right outside a military base and we were full of officers and senior non-coms staying at the base for training. The majority of them were checking out early to get back to their duty stations asap and I needed to know if she wanted wanted me back in to help the morning desk clerks.

After she said that she thought they could handle it, I learned the second tower had gone down. My father and I both headed to our cars and rushed to the nearest gas station cause we didn't know how bad it was going to get.

While I was filling my tank, the guy on the same pump but on the other side of the island looked at me and asked, "Do you think we're at war?" I replied, "We're at war with someone, the question is who."