I was dressed to leave the house and go to Seattle for a commute day, when the *BREAKING NEWS* banner came on the television as I walked around gathering my things. The live shot showed one of the WTC towers with black smoke billowing.
I called the beach house to talk to my Dad and my brother, as is my habit with serious breaking news, and told them to turn on the TV... They didn't have the TV on, they didn't know about it...
I tried to fill them in: "Well, there has been an accident, apparently a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York... I don't know what kind of plane... Yes, it is a very big deal. How will they ever put out a fire that high up? - How many people are above the fire and trapped? - I don't know. It's bad."
We watched from different channels and tried to figure it out. Still just kind-of ogling at an apparent freak accident far away from us.
Dad and I stayed on the phone, while the talking heads kept talking, who knows what they were talking about. Whatever it was, they were wrong. We were all wrong.
I saw the second plane, silently approaching the buildings and bursting into orange flame. "What the HELL?" All my assumptions and expectations of the kinds of things that could reasonably happen in this world turned upside-down. This was no accident.
Some time over the next few minutes Dad and I watched, together over phone lines, sometimes switching and talking to my brother… pulling our thoughts together. I don't know what they were doing, but I was standing 2-feet in front of the television, staring. Hoping that the black box would tell me what the hell was going on. I was glued to it.
They were grounding all the aircraft in the entire US. All planes had to head to the nearest airport and get on the ground. As the authorities and the media scrambled to account for all the planes, some were missing. Maybe as many as eight planes were missing or not communicating. Assumed hijacked. Where were they going to hit? – This isn't over!
"Did they just say a plane crashed into the Pentagon?" "No… they are confused. Airhead reporter meant trade center, or you heard wrong. The crashes are in New York." So many images were flashing before me. It was all happening very fast.
At some point I hung up with my Dad and called my boss at home. She was still getting dressed to go into the office. She wasn't watching the news either. I told her as briefly as I could what was going on.
"I do not want to be in Seattle today." I said from my safe compound in the country. "I understand. Stay home if you want." Our office, literally in the shadow of the Space Needle. Would the Space Needle be a target? – No. There were much bigger buildings in Seattle. The Columbia Center. Traffic is at a standstill on a good day. If something happened… I would not be able to get out of the city. "They are evacuating other big buildings, Jen… are you going in?" Yes… she was. I couldn't understand that. Our work is not THAT important. "Ok…" I said… talk to you later."
I don't even know if I came to Free Republic right away, or if I posted here at all that day. I had only been registered here a month. I didn't have friends here.
I returned to a "Pets" chat room where I used to hang out and had friends. It is an live chat space at Pogo games. A place where I used to go and kill time talking about dogs and horses. My friends were there, and we sat sometimes typing nothing, or short disjointed phrases. I spent a lot of time just staring, I know that. One of our friends was posting from her apartment in lower Manhatten. Four blocks from the WTC. She said they might evacuate her building. She was disabled, in a wheelchair. I later heard that her power went out when the WTC buildings came down. She had rolled out to the stairwell, since the elevators were out, and waited with her service dog until someone came to help them get out.
Over the next week or so, I went to that Pets chat site less often, finding the talk there less satisfying and finding FreeRepublic more engaging for the issues that were now so important.
I posted an essay a couple weeks after, How do we end terrorism without being impolite to Muslims? – a vanity… a presumptuous thing to do for a newbie, but it felt good to say, and no one gave me a hard time.
And then I began to find threads about the upcoming movie Fellowship of the Ring. It had been a few years since I had read those books. Lots of people were really into it. We started debating little things like whether Balrogs really had wings, and whether hobbits had funny pointed ears. Whether Arwen was going to join the Fellowship in the movie. The pictures from the movie looked neat. Perhaps the movie would actually be worthy of the books. Better than those horrid cartoons had been.
It was a grand diversion, that movie. A nice place to turn to where the players had integrity and valor and where the outcome was known. And I found so many good people here. Screen names became personalities, and all of you became my friends. I treasure all of you, for your humor, your caring and your love of country.
God Bless America, and if I am not asking too much Lord, God Bless The Hobbit Hole!
Well, that was long-winded, but that is how I remember it. Something happened far away, and happened to me as well, that day. And it changed my year. I think it brought me here.
Ginsu Hobbit.