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This made me cry! Thank you for sharing your story. I was 19 when 9/11 happened. I was driving to work, it was a gloriously beautiful morning, and I threw on the radio. I wanted to hear some happy oldies music. Oldies 98.1 had on a news report. The words didn't even penetrate into my mind, I just tried another station. Then another. All news.
And here's what a naive young idiot I was: it did not even occur to me that something was really wrong. I didn't listen to one word of the news reports to find out what the big deal was - I just figured it was some boring government stuff like a new trade agreement or whatever, so I gave up on the radio and played a CD instead.
I didn't know what was happening until I got to work and a coworker told me "dude, a plane just hit the World Trade Center!" And the first thing out of my idiot mouth was "did the pilot eject?" because 1) clearly I've watched too many movies and 2) I was picturing some little prop plane, not a passenger jet. So fucking naive.
So we all just turned on Stern and listened to his show. It was mostly stream of consciousness live coverage of what was happening in New York. And my asshole boss wasn't having it. The company I worked for was a little retailer that sold used VHS on ebay, and our boss said "ebay's still up, so we're still working!" (And here I'd like to say a very belated FUCK YOU, Mike!) But nobody could concentrate.
My boyfriend at the time was a student at Temple University. Back then, Temple never canceled classes for anything. So he called to tell me he was headed to the train station to go down to campus. And I'd just heard that the plane came down in Pennsylvania, and I'm scared to death that Philly is next. Because you're right, nobody knew how big this was going to get. So I'm crying, asking him to please skip class (luckily they did eventually cancel classes!), and I don't know. Everything felt helpless and chaotic. I just wanted to gather everyone I loved close and not let go.
Eventually most of us just went home. Our boss was angry but we just started filling out to the parking lot. And it was so surreal - that numb, but also on-the-verge-of-tears, bleak, almost dreamlike headspace. Your post expressed that so clearly.
I hugged my boyfriend so hard when I got home. I knew he was fine but I was so glad to actually touch him and know he was OK. That something was normal.
Well this turned into a novel... but I guess it's almost that time of year when we all recount our 9/11 story!
Theres something different between knowing logically someone is ok in a time of crisis, and KNOWING someone is ok in a time of crisis because you're there with them to experience their presence. Its that little extra bit of confirmation that drives the human experience, and irrationally drives emotion.
Logically, you could be talking to them on the phone, and know they aren't near the attacks. But humans aren't logical. Emotions aren't logical, but emotions are human. So I totally get what you're saying.