What I Didn’t Watch & Why

While I’ll have my usual Wives and Fear recap, I have an extra post today that I thought should be separate from the frivolity.

September 11 – 15th Anniversary

It’s a somber day in TVland. Although I don’t watch any of it. It’s not likely I’ll forget.

I remember it as being a beautiful day. My husband was off to work in Manhattan as a technician for Xerox, and I was up early, having a petsitting gig for my neighbors who were on vacation. I was also their “mother’s helper,” watching the kids several days a week, twins (a boy and a girl), and their little sister, still an infant. I went to put on Good Day, New York like I always did first thing. But all I got was static.

I cursed the cable company, flipping through the channels, still getting nothing. This should have given me a clue, since it was the same thing that had happened in 1993, but I made no such connection. Finally, I hit a station that had something going on, either CNN or FOX News. Standing in front of the TV chugging coffee, I saw that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I knew that was going to happen one day, I thought, believing, like probably everyone else at that moment, that it was just some kind of horrible accident, a miscalculation on somebody’s part. But then I watched, in what seemed like slow motion, a second plane hit the other tower. This was no accident.

On top of it, we’d had a lightening storm that had knocked out our phone line. I ran to my neighbor’s house and immediately called the phone company, explaining that my husband was in Manhattan and I had no phone. The operator was sympathetic, telling me to try unplugging and then plugging the phone back in. She said she’d pray for me and I said I’d do the same for her. I got the phone to work, but I could still only make out-going calls, and there was no way to reach a cell phone anyway. I wouldn’t find out until the afternoon that my husband was all right, and it was a bit of an odd circumstance. I was still on dial-up (remember that? remember how excruciatingly long it took to do everything? and the horrifying noise it made connecting?), and had a program called Pagoo, which rerouted calls to voicemail when the line was busy. I wasn’t able to actually pick the call up, but because I was online when he called, I was able to hear the message right away.

I’d spent the day going back and forth to my neighbor’s house, sometimes making calls to friends while I was there, one friend’s first words to me “they just hit the Pentagon” rather than “hello,” watching the first tower fall on their television, screaming in a dreamlike way without sound, tears streaming down my face as I walked back to my house. My time at home was spent keeping abreast of the news on TV and talking with people anywhere and everywhere online, going into various chatrooms to find out what was happening in other corners of the globe. I also had friends in Pennsylvania, not that far from where Flight 93 would end up crashing. We all corresponded through chat, since there was virtually no social media then.

My husband and I had planned on going to the movies that weekend to see Rock Star, but never made it there. I spent the next week online, reading and writing, while listening to the news. The intro music from FOX News’s evening program still makes me feel queasy. There was a sale on Grey Goose at the neighborhood liquor store and I steadily drank, but never felt drunk, eating occasionally, mostly capellini with mushroom or red clam sauce from the local Italian place, which was next to the neighborhood liquor store. I wasn’t hungry often, but in the moments when I was, I tried to eat as much as possible, so I’d have something besides vodka in me. I listened to old records, especially any with an NYC theme.

The oddest thing, and maybe the one that stood out the most, was the quiet. It’s not as noisy here as the city, but it’s not exactly the boondocks either. I’m also not that far from three major airports and an Army base. But aside from the occasional military helicopter, nothing was flying except the birds. The day of, you could hear only the ambulance sirens in the distance, sad and chilling at the same time. If I’d gone to the beach, I could have probably seen the the smoke, but I wanted to stick close to home. When the first real plane flew overhead again, my German Shepherd went out of her mind, I guess having gotten used to the silence. My first thought was, are you going where you’re supposed to? I still think that sometimes, and hate the sound of an airplane or helicopter. I haven’t, however, let it stop me from flying.

So, yeah, I don’t watch any of it. I look at a few articles online, sometimes watching a video, or looking at a slideshow, but I don’t want to relive it totally. On the first anniversary, I listened to “the reading of the names” (which sounds like something out of a Shirley Jackson novel), and watched many of the tributes, but as time went on, I just couldn’t. Admittedly, I’m very blessed, no one close to me was hurt or killed. The husband of a friend was traumatized, having seen bodies fall before escaping; the high school boyfriend I’d followed to NYC (a story for another time) just missed being there – the person he was meeting had canceled; my husband’s co-worker from Xerox took a call there that morning – he survived, but never returned to work; the hotel and restaurant that I frequented for Dark Shadows conventions was gone, and the employees with it. The city I’d called home for so long, the place I’d wanted to live in since I was five, had changed forever. It’s not something I like to think about, but not something I’m likely to forget.

The weekend after Labor Day, a neighboring town has a “good-by to summer” party and blows off fireworks. It’s so close, it sounds like it’s in my backyard. In 2002, it startled us all. My neighbors and I all went running outside, wondering what was happening, only to realize it was a harmless celebration.

“Well, if the terrorists do come for us, we’ll be sitting ducks,” one of my neighbors said. “We’ll all go running into the street like idiots.” We all laughed. Maybe for the first time in a year.