A year and 8 or 9 hours ago, I set my alarm for my usual 8:30. I was still living with my family and a lot of times the scuffle downstairs or over in the bathroom would wake me up. Nothing of the sort happened on that day. My alarm went off and I let it play for about 3 seconds until I hit the snooze. I was so tired. Twice more, I woke up to someone talking on HFS about a crash or something.
I walked downstairs just in time to hear them talking about the WTC being, (blown up?) Odd. It took me a few minutes to realize what was going on but once I did I just sat there in front of the tv through another crash until I realized I had to call work and let them know I was late. I drove in shortly thereafter, 95 south was empty with nothing more than the electronic banner stating something along the lines of “Limited traffic to downtown Baltimore.”
I got in work. Julie seemed to have been crying. She told me the pentagon was also hit. I think I said “not another one.”
Everyone knows the rest — a few minutes later we all watch in horror as the towers being to collapse.
I sat in my notch at work, watching incoming news on the high speed broadband. I sat there all day. The phones did not ring. Only a couple calls, some from people who had friends in NY who couldn’t dial us because the phone lines were busy so they made reboot requests. The phones did not ring.
Adam sat in his notch at work, listening to MSNBC. He sat there all day. He seemed angry. We talked about war. We talked about us going. We talked about a lot of things. We wanted to know who did it.
I talked to Becky. We didn’t have much to say. We had failed by that point.
I went home to my family. The girls got off school early. We had dinner. Normal life, while not quite normal anymore, returned.