Ten Years After

As I write this, it has been exactly ten years since American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I was in Seattle, about to start work at Nordstrom.com. I was in the break room, waiting for my start time, watching TV. Matt Lauer broke in on the KING 5 news, saying that a plane had hit the tower. Not knowing the utter horror that was about to unfold, I laughed. Not knowing anything yet, I thought some moron in a Cessna had caused a small amount of damage. Little did I know…

I had to start work at 6:00 AM Pacific time, so I couldn’t keep watching. It was about two hours later, when I got my first break, that I found out just how horrible it all was. I learned that a second plane had hit the other WTC tower, the Pentagon had been attacked as well, and United Flight 93 had plowed into the ground in Shanksville, PA.

Everyone at work would rush to the break room at every opportunity to catch up with the news, at this point wondering if it were ever going to end, if there were more planes out there about to plow into other buildings around the country, worried that someone we knew, or even ourselves, were about to die. It was truly awful. They showed video of what I later learned was the second plane hitting the tower, but when I first watched it, I thought a gas line had broken inside the building. I distinctly remember the absolute and utter shock that the scene brought to me.

Even now, ten years since the events of that horrible day, I cannot long watch news stories about it, nor can I read the books that have been written. It’s just too much.

I live in Federal Way, near a high school named for Todd Beamer, one of the heroes who stopped United 93 from hitting the terrorists’ intended target in Washington, D.C.