7 years ago today. The world changed for Americans. This wasn't the first time it had changed, it was just the first time it had changed for our generation. We had been sheltered from things for many years, we grew distant from things that the rest of the world took for granted. Like most of us on the eastern side of the country, I was at work when the world started to wake up to chaos. The office started to whisper, then people roamed from one office to the next... I finally walked up to one of my co-workers and asked them what was going on. That was before the second plane, that was before everybody knew it wasn't just a horrible accident. My initial reaction was ..wow, how could that happen? Thinking that, some poor Magoo-eyed pilot had somehow gotten lost and blinded by the sun. If only really. Of course, by now, all of America was watching CNN, if you hadn't been watching your TV or surfing CNN either your co-worker or neighbor had called you or knocked on your door. So we were all glued to our monitors or TVs at this point, when the unthinkable happened....again. This time, almost everybody was watching as the second plane slammed into the second tower. In an instant, everybody knew... this was no mistake, no accident. This was deliberate, planned, evil incarnate manifesting itself right before our very eyes. I stood there in shock. We looked at one another, like we were all having some shared nightmare, hoping, praying we would wake up safe in our beds like we have every other day before..... but would never do again quite the same way. The entire office, the entire country was in a state of disbelief at this point. Management had been informed that financial centers were targeted, they were sending us all home. So one by one, we walked to the parking lot to our cars, the air was filled with a thick nervousness. On the way home you could see the faces of other drivers as you passed them or sat in traffic.... numb.... hollow looks, some were visibly upset, while some seemed to be totally oblivious. It would be nice to have been oblivious, even for 15 more minutes. Like the rest of the country , we went home, we sat, stone faced at times, crying at others as we watched over and over the towers falling and the entire scene repeated on every channel. We saw the Pentagon in flames, the very center of our defences... we saw planes being crashed into fields... It was somber, it was frightening. It made us angry and even before the body count was in and the dust had settled, we were at War. It was just the beginning of something that , here 7 years later has still not been resolved, has not healed... but we keep trying. We keep remembering, and if we are able to do nothing else, this we must never forget.
