You know what I’m talking about.
I was on my way to work. I had just left the ghetto-assed place where I was staying / nannying in Atlantic Beach, Florida and was heading for my lovely job at video production company Atlantic Video in Jacksonville Beach. It was one of those weird mornings when you get in your car and you’re not listening to the radio, you just keep flicking stations trying to find some music. That’s what I was doing. I was flicking stations but there was no music on any of them. That’s when I started listening. It was 8.46am and flight 11 had just hit the north tower of The World Trade Centre. I don’t remember the drive to work, but it was probably quick. I do remember calling my boss and telling him to turn on the news now.
I got to work within 5 minutes and flicked ALL of the TV’s on – it was a video production company so there were monitors everywhere. The networks were going crazy and as we all know there were cameras rolling in New York after the first plane hit. I saw the second plane hit at 9.03am and like the rest of America I was knocked back in my seat and couldn’t take my eyes of the screen for the rest of the day.
I grabbed the phone and called my parents in New Zealand. It was the middle of the night and I told them to TURN ON THEIR TVs NOW. It was awful, it was impossible to convey what had happened to my family on the other side of the world who had been sleeping only moments ago and could in no way comprehend the enormity of what had just happened on US soil.
Thirty minutes later it happened again, this time into the Pentagon. Thirty minutes after that it happened again, this time in Pennsylvania.
David and I will never forget that most horrific of all days. Though it was without a doubt the worst day in living memory, I am so glad that I was in America on that day. It sounds like a strange thing to say, but having lived through it with my American friends and then later marrying a US citizen, I will never forget how the country stopped and we all cried together that day, how everyone hurt so bad for all of the victims, and how the Super Power that so many around the world hate so much, became so human to me.
I love The United States and will never forget September 11th, 2001 and the hideous suffering that occurred that day, and every year since.
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