I heard the news about a plane hitting the north tower on the radio while on the way to work, but I thought they were referencing the antenna on top of the building, not the building itself.
Anyway, my leftist coworkers were laughing and goofing while watching it on the big TV at work. That made me angry, and it hardened my heart against leftists.
I immediately called my dad and we went to donate blood, but the line to donate was out the door!
Anyway, those events and the way leftists reacted to those events was a major motivator for me to move from California to Texas. I am glad I did, as I am among my people now, and life is a lot simpler, with less day-to-day hostility.
Thus, 9/11 is the reason my daughter will be raised a Texan, away from the moral filth that is the San Francisco Bay Area. Oh yeah, I also married a Texas woman. That's a bonus too.
I was a bit behind you. I had heard about the first tower when I got in my car on the way to work - and was about 15 minutes from work when the second tower was hit. You instinctively knew at that time it was an attack.
I like your story. Mine is somewhat similar.
I grew up in the SF Bay Area and was also on my way to work when I heard the first reports that a plane had hit a WTC tower.
I remember my first, initial feeling and thoughts and they haven’t changed. My first reaction was anger, not at the attackers as much as our lack of intelligence to be taken by such complete surprise. I simmered to a slow boil when I thought about how eight years of Clinton hand-wringing, double-minded inaction, and partial dismantling of our intelligence capabilities emboldened and enabled these attackers and killers of the innocent.
I, too, was turned off by the first Leftist comment I heard at work, a complaint that this would be an excuse for getting us in a war (as though that attack wasn’t itself a declaration of war).
I have also moved away from California and now live in temperate, mountainous northern Arizona where I feel much more at home spiritually, politically, and culturally. I also love Texas, but couldn’t find a place to live that wasn’t either humid or windy.