Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about the "where I was" listicle.

BLOG CITY PROMPT: "What were you doing and where were you on 9-11 when the twin towers were attacked?"

'Sup y'all? What a coincidence...I've been a WDC member for 13+ years, and this is the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy. I don't know exactly how many 9/11-themed entries I've written; all I know is I've written too many of them, and it never gets easier.

I woke up on Tuesday morning, September 11th, and it was like any other day. I had a slight hangover from being out the night before; Monday nights were Karaoke Night at the bar around the corner from 542, and my roommate and I would go up there to hang out with some of my friends. I'd met one of his friends that night, and eventually I'd start dating one of her coworkers.

The previous weekend I was at a party with a bunch of people I worked with...just a random get-together that quickly devolved into multiple shenanigans, including but not limited to chugging from a bottle of Southern Comfort, and the theft of a large, commercial gumball machine. Neither directly resulted in me getting pulled over by the cops on my way home (well, maybe the Southern Comfort thing did a little), but a mix-up with my insurance led to my car getting impounded.

Luckily I had a coworker who lived a block away from me at the time, and since we worked similar schedules I just walked over to her place and caught a ride from her. I hardly ever listened to the radio or the TV in the morning; I had a shower radio that played cd's, so that's what my morning routine consisted of.

I had a nice walk over to LeAnne's house considering my fragile state from the previous evening's vocal shreddings and the disregard for my liver. It was a warm, sunny day. It was 9:30 (we started work at 10am). I had no clue nothing was ever gonna be the same.

I'd made it up the stairs to her apartment...I liked to be a few minutes early because it's always nice to be punctual when someone's doing you a favor. Plus LeAnne was a cheerleader for a few local pro and semi-pro teams (as well as a college cheerleading coach), and she was insanely attractive...once or twice I'd shown up to see her wearing nothing above the waist but a bra and a towel around her hair.

Normally we'd grumble about how tired we were or whatever, and then we'd pile into her car and I'd bitch about her shitty music for the 15 minutes it'd take us to get to work. But there was a different tone in her voice (she'd been listening to the radio while she was getting ready)...almost a sense of urgency. "We have to get to the car...something's happened but I can't figure out what" she said. I was kinda like "Eh, whatever...I could use some breakfast."

But once we started off, we were able to figure out what happened...planes had flew into the World Trade Center. If you'd asked me on September 10th what the WTC was or what kind of business went on there, or even where it was located, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell you.

Fortunately, we worked at the flagship retail location of a local consumer electronics company just outside of Buffalo. As soon as we walked in to the Video department, we saw that everyone who worked in the building (from the sales staff and management, the people stocking the warehouse, our delivery crew, and the accountants, bookkeepers and marketing departments) was sitting in a giant group in front of the 32" and 36" televisions, watching CNN. I don't think I'd ever been around such a large group of people (maybe 40 of us, at least) who were in collectively the same state of shock.

Just after 10:30am we opened our doors, but nobody was prepared to work. Mornings were usually quiet and this was no different, but the people that did come in came because they knew we'd have TV's on and tuned in to the coverage. We sold a few extra smaller sets than normal that day, because people wanted a something for their office or wherever they were gonna be that didn't have a TV (remember...this was the pre-HDTV, internet-on-your-cell-phone, computers are everywhere era...and in Western New York alone, almost every cell phone was down for hours).

Around one or two-ish, our owner came in. I think a lot of us were kinda plodding through the day, obviously distracted by the events as they'd unfolded..and nobody was prepared for the lashing he was about to dish out on us.

He demanded that we change the channel to something "less depressing...everyone knows what's happened and nobody wants to see this!" Even though we had satellite reception with practically every channel known to man, it was a chore finding something appropriate to watch because every station seemed to be showing something related to another channel's coverage of the attacks. He went on for a few minutes about it, and then disappeared...he was in charge of a multi-million dollar local empire; who were we to question him? He'd been known for firing people just for yawning at his Saturday Morning Meetings, so there was no need to try and run up on him, even if he was being a dick and one of his employees had no idea if his fiancee's mother had made it out of the WTC in time or if she was alright.

I came home that night shortly after 9pm, and my roommate was watching more coverage on CNN. He was all like, "OMG, dude, did you hear what happened?" and then he started to fill me in before I interrupted him to remind him that there were approximately 60 televisions running where I worked (really smart kid; just sometimes...not so bright). We sat and took in the reports and talked about it, unsure of how this was gonna affect us going forward.

And looking back, it wasn't an immediate, but a more gradual change in how we would about certain things. You can say that some aspects of life have slowly made their way back to their pre-9/11 protocols; for many other things, they'll never be the same...I'm not here today to say what's wrong or what's right or to complain about anything. I'll save that for another day. For now, let's just look back on it for what it is, and give thanks to the thousands of first responders and heroes for their efforts on that fateful day, and remember those who weren't so fortunate enough to have a September 12th.

MUSICAL BREAK!!

I'm not a very patriotic person, but I'm sentimental enough to know the significance and importance of this song.

"Time is running out...let's roll."
Lyrics and interpretation.  

THE LISTICLE 9.11

In conjunction with "BLOG CITY presents: The LIST" , I present to you this list of 14 songs about peace, war, and freedom.

1) "Keep On Rockin' In The Free World" by Neil Young
2) "Freedom" by Rage Against The Machine
3) "Give Peace A Chance" by John Lennon
4) "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)" by George Harrison
5) "Masters Of War" by Bob Dylan
6) "Peace Train" by Cat Stevens
7) "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath
8) "Details Of The War" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
9) "Soldier Boys And Jesus Freaks" by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
10) "War Song" by O.A.R.
11) "People Got To Be Free" by The Rascals
12) "Bullets" by Hawksley Workman
13) "Uh-Merica" by Regina Spektor
14) "Apocalypse WOW! (Feat. Hungary Bear)" by Reggie And The Full Effect

I trust that you all know how to use YouTube if you're interested enough in any of these songs.

More fallout from the decision by Apple to release U2's new album for free to anyone with an iTunes account! (Or, kids who are even lazier than me...or, count this among the things I never could've imagined happening or hearing in the 21st century.) "Who is U2?"  

For further proof that text messaging and Twitter are ruining the English language as we know it (and thereby causing a rapid decline in intelligent society), please see the above link. I've always hated "LOL", but the fact that "loool" now exists makes me wanna crack myself in the dome with an unabridged dictionary. And while I'm guilty of the occasional "WTF?" from time to time (although I most certainly prefer to say all three words out loud, in full), I've never seen so many "tf" abbreviations in one place before, and if you think WTF looks dumb, "who tf" looks like a dictionary's abortion.

And that's all I have to say about today...peace, do what we gotta do, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!