Memories of 9/11

It's been 10 years since 9/11.

On Sept 11, 2001, I was at work. In the World Trade Center. Specifically, I was in 2 WTC, on the 16th floor. If you recall, 2 WTC was the second building hit on 9/11.

On 9/11/2001, I worked for NDRI, which stands for National Development and Research Institutes. We did work into drug abuse, HIV, AIDS and other things, and I worked as a statistician.

As usual, I got to work around 7:30. I am an early bird, and no one at work minded if I worked 7:30 to 3:30 instead of more typical hours. It was a beautiful early fall day. My son had just started a new school, it was the first week of classes.

On 9/11 I was sitting in my cubicle. I had just ordered some breakfast to be delivered, and was going through e-mails and planning my day. Then I heard a loud thump. It sounded like someone had dropped a ream of paper on the 17th floor. But that wasn't what it was. This was 9/11. And someone had crashed a plane into 1 WTC, right across the way from us. But I didn't know.

Then someone yelled "The other building is on fire". Several of us early birds rushed to the window, and, sure enough, it was on fire. Rumors started. Soon, we knew it was a plane. But rumors were saying 747 or a small plane or all sorts of things. A few minutes later, our office administrator came through, telling us all to evacuate. Like a good computer user, I had backed up my files a few days before 9/11, I did that each Friday. I had the backup disk in my back pack. And I left my backpack in my cubicle.

Down the stairs we want. When we got to the first floor, or maybe the basement, I felt the building shake, but everything was calm and no one was pushing or shoving; for me, this was the real start of 9/11.

No one I saw got hurt. We all got to the outside of the building and we were staring up at the spectacle of the World Trade Center burning. Rumors were flying about everything. What caused the fire, who might have done it, what sort of plane, was it terrorism and so on. No one thought about the building collapsing, certainly I didn't. But I figured anything falling from that height could kill me, so I ran and found a subway (some lines were still running) and got home that way. On 9/11 I watched the buildings collapse while sitting on my couch. Meanwhile, my wife was wondering about me and where I was. It turned out that she was the last in our family to find out I was OK. All that happened to me, physically, on 9/11 was that I had glass in my hair. I also didn't lose my job. But we lost a lot of work, and I lost some irreplaceable objects.

Eventually, my wife and our son got home. Everyone OK. This was the midpoint of 9/11 for me.

New York City has a reputation for being a rude place; in my opinion, we're not so much rude as busy. But on 9/11, and the days after, the city was transformed. Everyone not only cared about everyone, but everyone let it show. It was a kinder and gentler city in those first post-9/11 days. It was a city in shock, but we showed our shock by caring; by slowing down; by being kind.

Afterward, my family suffered some troubles; our son would ask these hard-to-answer questions: "You mean they flew into the building on purpose?" and "I thought pilots were good people". 5 year olds are like that. A few months later, when our company had new offices, he asked if anyone would crash a plane into that. And our societal backlash led to him asking (from reading the paper) "daddy, what's torture?" and to me not being able to say it was something other countries did.

I've told you the beginning of my 9/11, and the middle. But it's been 10 years. And the end of 9/11 hasn't happened yet.