The best seat in the house is the view from the couch

Five Years...

“So, where were you?”

Those four little words today threw me completely off-kilter. The question came from so far out in left field that it might as well have been a Manny Ramirez relay throw to the plate.

I was leaving my office, completely oblivious to just about everything around me. I got on the elevator to go to the parking garage, when a mid-40’s woman, the only other passenger in the elevator car with me, turned around and simply said “So, where were you?”

The funny thing is, it only took me about half a second to understand what she was asking me. Where was I on September 11^th, 2001? It took me even less time to answer.

“I was at work just outside of Boston. At a natural gas facility. Probably the safest, and the scariest place I could have been, short of the top floor of the Hancock Tower. You?”

“I was here (Rhode Island Hospital), working. No one knew what to think, so we just prepared for the worst.”

Then the elevator doors opened, and she turned and wished me a good night, and walked away. I actually stood in the elevator for a full thirty seconds before I realized that the doors were closing and I was going to have to ride back down to the basement again.

No bother. I had a lot to think about.

Back in 2001, I was a junior in college in Boston. I can remember just about everything about that morning, even though the day really affected me very little, aside from a national sense. I didn’t know anyone in the Towers or the Pentagon. I didn’t know anyone on the planes, though there was one person from my hometown who had the misfortune of boarding American Flight 11 at Logan. My only connection to the day was watching it all unfold on a TV screen from the warehouse platform in the facility I was working at.

9/11 was an absolutely gorgeous morning in Boston. My normal workday routine at the time was to wake up and find out which facility I would be needed at, then get showered, dressed and head out. That morning, I was scheduled to be in West Roxbury, at the Keyspan Gas Main Facility. That meant that my morning commute would take me through Copley Square in Boston, out to the Orange Line on the T, and then through Forest Hills and West Roxbury on multiple buses. Later in the afternoon, I would begin my first day of classes at Emerson College, after transferring there in the summer of ’01, meaning I would make essentially the same trek back to the city. It was a commute I despised, but that morning, I didn’t mind it. It was a nice day, and the walk wasn’t bad.

I got to Copley just before 8AM. As I exited the Green Line station to walk to the Orange Line, I looked up at the Hancock Tower, where my cousin works. There was a perfect blue reflection bouncing off the side, with an airplane, newly departed from Logan, passing behind the tower and mirrored in the glass. I remember thinking to myself that it would make a spectacular photo, and I kicked myself for not carrying my camera that day, even though I would probably have found a great use for it in class.

Later that night, I did the math on the timing, and figured out the direction of the plane. More than likely, the plane I saw was one of the two that ended up bringing down the Towers.

I got on the Orange Line and picked up a copy of the free daily paper – The Metro. I did my usual routine of scanning the bland headlines and quick hit styles of reporting. Midway through the paper, a small sidebar note caught my eye. There was a “This Day in History” type of column that mentioned that September 11^th had been dedicated as “World Peace Day” to commemorate some peace treaty signing somewhere in the past (I think it was Israel and Egypt).

Immediately, I thought to myself that something bad was going to happen. If you had asked me at the time, I probably would have told you that I was about 80% certain that a major building was going to be destroyed that day. As soon as I got to work, I tried to find the nearest television to see what was going on in the world. No news at the time. That was good news. I retreated to my office to start with my normal tech-wizard responsibilities.

About a half hour later, I heard Howard Stern on the radio in the room next to mine say that a plan had hit the World Trade Center. A few people gathered around the radio; I headed for a television and immediately reached for my cell phone. The day was not going to be good. I called my mother, an elementary school nurse, and told her to turn on a television as soon as possible, because some bad shit was about to happen. She didn’t believe me.

After the second plane hit, I called her and told her to find a TV immediately, and that I might need a ride out of Boston before the day was over. She started paying attention at that point.

When news of the Pentagon attack hit, I was still on the phone with her talking about the fact that Mass. State Police had already locked down my facility, and that I wasn’t going to be able to make it out of the building in time to get to class. Not that I was terribly worried about classes.

Finally, when the fourth plane was brought down by some of the bravest and most selfless people that I never had the honor to meet, the State Police left our site, but told us that no one was to enter the premises – once you left, you were gone for the day.

I packed up my backpack and headed for the bus station.

Two things will always stick with me. First, the fact that I was the only person on my bus, the only one on my subway car on the Orange Line, and the only person – as far as I could see – to exit the Back Bay Orange Line T station when I finally arrived there at about 2PM. Boston was nearly deserted – I found out later that the Hancock and Prudential towers, as well as a few other buildings around town had all been evacuated by noon.

My cousin – who is in charge of building maintenance and security, among other things, for his company in the Hancock – was one of the last people to leave the building. He’d never say it in public, but he told me a few months later that that was the most terrified he’d been in his life.

The second thing that struck me that day was the silence. Not just from the lack of people, but from the lack of aircraft overhead. On any given day in Boston, there are about 15 planes flying over the city at varying altitudes at all times. Some are landing, some are leaving, but there is always the noise of jet engines in the background.

But not that day. And not for a few days afterwards either. I remember the first time I heard a plane it was a fighter jet making a run over the city at about 11PM the next night. It was so startling that I got out of bed and went to the window, just to be safe.

As I walked through Copley and made my way to the Green Line, I decided that I didn’t want to go to my apartment. I lived alone that year and I didn’t feel like sitting on my couch, staring at the news reports, by myself. I instead decided to go to my friends’ place at the Ashford Village in Allston to take up residence on the big blue couch and stare in disbelief at what we were watching.

About an hour after I got there, someone remembered that the father of one of our mutual friends worked for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter on the top floor of 2WTC. We were all too petrified to call and see if there was any word yet. Luckily, a few days later we found out that he had transferred offices just a few months earlier to avoid the commute time.

I finally made it home, though there was really no point. I wasn’t in a mood to eat. I didn’t really want to watch anymore TV. The Internet was so bogged down by everyone searching for updates that surfing the web or playing a game was completely out of the question. I decided to just lay in bed and listen to the radio. I flipped on WBCN just in time to hear the DJ tell callers that they were going all-request, so long as no one requested any of the songs that the FCC had put on a “no-play” list. Things like “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane”, for obvious reasons.

I don’t think I slept that night, and not much for the following two or three nights. I had class the next day just before noon, and when the sun climbed up into the sky, I got out of bed and turned on the TV. I just had to make sure it wasn’t all one really, really bad dream. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

So why am I writing all of this? Why now, five years after the fact, am I relaying my experience on September 11^th? Well, for a couple of reasons. First, in 2001, I didn’t have this type of an open forum to discuss whatever I wanted to. I had my voice, and whoever was unlucky enough to be within earshot or me when I went on a rant. And that was it.

Today, I realized that I never really talked about the day, except in general terms. In fact, the only person that had ever heard an account of the day from my perspective was my mother, and only because I was babbling at a hundred words a second on my cell phone as the day was unfolding.

Very little affects me in this world. I’m about the most laid back person you’ll ever meet, and I’m pretty apathetic about just about everything going on around me. Most world events; if they don’t affect me directly, I usually don’t form an opinion, and frankly, don’t care. Shallow, sure. But I have a nicely insulated little bubble carved out for myself in this world, and if I can use it to protect me from the horrors and tragedies of everything outside, then I am going to stay warm and comfortable and forget about anything else.

But this wasn’t something I could ignore, and it’s certainly not something I can, or will, forget. Usually, I use this space to crack lousy jokes and poke fun at overpaid athletes who I would trade places with in a heartbeat. Today, that just didn’t feel right.

Sure, there’s a football game on the TV, and another on the West Coast that I’ll watch highlights of in the morning. But I’m just not interested. Today was a day I spent reflecting on the biggest story that will ever happen in my lifetime, and probably the last one that will effect me in no way whatsoever, other than in my heart.

So, that begs the question.

Where were you?

Lata.

posted by Big D @ 9:34 PM