By asking a simple question on Facebook — "What were you doing nine years
ago today?" — I got a wide variety of responses. The one common thread
present: we were all doing very ordinary things... working, visiting family,
going to school, driving. It was just a late summer morning like any other
until the extraordinary events in New York, Washington, and Shanksville made us
pause in our tracks individually and as a nation.
I remember exactly where I was. It was a Tuesday, and I was at work. Someone came to my office and told me an airplane had run into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. "What a horrible accident," I thought, and continued on with whatever I was doing. At some point, although I don't remember the specifics, I became aware that a second plane had collided with the other tower. I knew it was no accident then.
My job consisted of moving throughout a facility fixing computers and making things work correctly, and as I did this (because things there were always broken and something always needed attention), I passed by TVs in waiting areas and such. Every TV I passed had a crowd around it, every eye glued to the unfolding spectacle. So I got to see fractured snippets of news throughout the day. Reports came in that the Pentagon was on fire, then that another plane had hit the Pentagon. There was a single isolated report of a plane being shot down over Pennsylvania. I saw both towers fall, I saw President Bush give a hasty statement from an (at the time) undisclosed location (which turned out to be Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana). Normally open doors at work were suddenly locked, and the security guards seemed on edge and more numerous.
All domestic air traffic was declared grounded until further notice, and I went outside to watch some of the last flights bank in toward Yeager Airport. It would be days before planes flew again, something I really noticed at home, where I live directly beneath one of the approach vectors for Yeager. Though I woke one morning during the flight ban to the waspish sound of a military plane, and I felt completely justified in calling the airport to raise concern. They told me it was the Air National Guard doing some maintenance work on an engine.
Despite any current ideology, political posturing, or what-have-you, we all have that date in common, and we all witnessed those events. Our lives were interrupted by the unprecedented.
I'm not going to judge the actions which followed or comment on whether or not they were right or wrong. And, I really can't say whether or not this country is better off today than it was nine years ago. The only thing I can say for certain is this: it is a much different place.