September 11

I am seeing a lot of people reminiscing about where they were or what they were doing on September 11, 2001...... the day New York, The United States and the World changed.. I was home sick in bed. I remember my roomate and best friend Holly running into my room telling me to turn on the TV there was a plane wreck in New York and things were exploding and "they think this might be a big deal". There was so much chaos for so much of that day...... it was so hard to make sense of what was happening...... hard to believe that someone would actually do something like this on purpose.....and hard to image how many people's lives were changing, in a big way, right before our eyes. I was 23 years old and had never experienced anything like that (and haven't since..... hope to never again). My most profound memory of that day is seeing the shape of a plane punched out of the second tower..... it was like someone had taken a cookie cutter to the side of a BUILDING and no matter how deep the denial, at that point there wasn't much question of what was going on. I went back to work the next day at PAML (boy, I hated that job) and I remember portable TV's set up in every break room and thats where we all sat in silence and watched what was still unfolding in New York. I can honestly say that that day had more impact on my life than any other day, ever and I really believe that life as an American will never be the same. I remember such a surge of patriotism.......an almost fierce pride in being an American...............and the strongest sense of community I have ever experienced. For once Americans truly were United like only a tragedy can bring people together. Sadly, I think we've lost sight of that since and I can only hope that the "Powers that be" took something genuine with them from that day...... and that all of those lives weren't lost in vain.