Where Were You 9/11/2001 ?

[PornoDoggy]

I staggered out of bed after about four hour's sleep, saw some terribly ominous posts on TNB that didn't make much sense, stumbeled downstairs for the first cup of coffee, turned on CNN ... and dropped the cup of coffee. It didn't get cleaned up for a couple of hours.

Six weeks before that we had gone to the wedding of my girlfriend's son, a Marine Corps officer. He left on a Westpac cruise two weeks after that. As what happened sunk in - just about the time the first tower sank to the ground - it occurred to me that he would NOT be making the normal, routine Westpac cruise that sailors and marines had been making since '75 (his unit was one of the first into Afganistan, and he's been to Iraq twice since).

I was scared - not so much for myself, but for my two of my daughters and my grandson living in St. Louis, for my girlfriend's son. I was outraged - at the cocksuckers who did it, and at the fact I was too gawdamned old, too gawdamned fat, too gawdamned asthmatic to go back into the Navy.

[Dravyk]

You know how you hear bad news and think you must be dreaming? Well my experience made it even more confusing.

I was asleep. In those days I had the clock radio set to the news station, as I found hearing someone talk loud seemed to wake me up better at the time than music or a standard buzzer.

So, very eerily, coming out of a deep sleep to that point where one is still sleeping, but becoming aware of the things around them, I kept hearing about a plane into a building. Thought, literally, I was having a nightmare. Came to realize slowly it was the radio, and it was true.

So after maybe 15 minutes of the announcers words piercing my subsconscious, I finally - bang - was awake. And just stared at the radio a minute. Convinced though awake I must still be dreaming. Ran downstairs, turned on the TV shortly before the second plane hit.

Talking about walking into the middle and not knowing what was going on. I was still trying to "assimilate the data", figure out what was what, what was tape, what was live. At first when I saw the plane go into the second tower, I thought it was the first one and I was watching tape at first.

Like everyone else, the first plane and you think my God how did that happen. The second one hits and you realize, fuck, we're under some bizarre kind of attack.

Having lived in Manhatten some seven years prior knew a bunch of folks up there and a few very good friends. My next thing was to try and contact them and see if they were alright.