Posted by Perry
I just finished reading Scott McKain’s post about his memories of the terrorist attacks on September 11th.
I remember it vividly as I was working in the gaming industry at the time. I worked the “swing” shift and never got to bed before 3 am. I remember being woken up by a pounding on my door, it was my mother who was in a state of panic.
“Are you watching CNN?” was all I can recall her saying when she rushed in. After I replied in the negative, she just kept repeating “They’ve attacked us!” I didn’t know who, or what, was attacked or doing the attacking – just that I had my near-hysterical mom almost pleading with me to turn the TV on.
Once I got her calmed a bit and had the news on, she finally explained that the Pentagon and World Trade Center had been hit by airplanes. I remember numbly watching the coverage to see just how bad it was when I asked her (in a half-asleep stupor) where was the WTC as I suddenly realized that I couldn’t see it. She again got hysterical and wailed that it was gone – it had collapsed.
I looked at her dumbfounded and seeing my disbelief, she just pointed to the TV screen. “Just look” is all she had to say. Together we sat there watching the chaos and carnage unfold before our very eyes – neither of us saying a word until the phone ringing finally broke the silence.
It was one of my coworkers, Gary, saying not to come yet as he wasn’t sure if we were going to be shut down or not. He told me to stick by the phone and they would let me know what was happening. I hung up the phone still in a state of disbelief – there was no way this was happening to us, it couldn’t happen – could it?
Mom went back home to inform my grandmother and stay with her grandchildren. I stuck by the phone and watched the reports come in. I’m not a very religious person by any means – but that day I prayed like never before or since.
The phone rang again, it was another coworker, Sheila, who told me we were being closed and not to come in. We talked about what had transpired and how such a thing could occur. We did agree that closing was for the best, even though our job is to provide entertainment for customers, under the circumstances it just didn’t seem appropriate – not to mention we had no idea if something would happen there security-wise.
The rest of my memory of that day is very personal to me – I tried to go out for food, gas (which skyrocketed to over $3 by that time) and tried to make sense of it all. I shed many a tear that day for the people in NYC, Washington and Pennsylvania who were innocent victims of nothing more than pure hatred for our country and our way of life.
September 11th changed the way we think about the world – heck – it changed everything as we know it.
None of us will ever forget that day for the rest of our lives.