(repost from 9/11/03)
Hey Dad, what were you doing on that day?
There is probably at least one date in a person's lifetime where they will remember what they were doing almost down to the exact second that something considerably memorable/tragic happened in history.
When I was in Hawaii this past August, I asked my Uncle George [who speaks in old school pidgen] what he was doing when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It turns out he was delivering laundry for his brother-in-law's business and heard the BOOM and turned toward sound and saw billowing clouds of black smoke.
My mother remembers November 22, 1963 pretty clearly. Roosevelt School in Oakland just got a brand new TV for the school and all the kids were in the assembly hall watching President John F. Kennedy as he rode in his motorcade through downtown Dallas, TX. She remembers hearing gunshots and then the cars speeding away. Later on, she remembers her teacher crying as they announced over the intercom that President Kennedy died at the hospital.
On this day two years ago, I was sleeping on the living room couch at my parents' house. My mother, who usually wakes up around 6, was getting ready for work because she leaves at 7am. As she's moving about her room, she usually has the TV on and listens to the various news and traffic updates. This particular morning she woke me up and said, "Chim, terrorists just crashed an airplane into the World Trade Towers and one of them collapsed!" Still groggy, I turned on the TV and was watching the station flip flop both the crash of the first pland and then the real-time of the remaining tower. I started to fall asleep again when I watched what I thought was yet another replay, a plane crashing, a tower falling...and then the picture was empty. "Holy Sh!t," I thought, "that really happened!" I just witnessed the death of a whole bunch of people.
I drove her to work at SF State and then I continued on to Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo. Putting the radio on KQED I listened as they talked about the attack all morning. Then I opened the store, only to have the security guard come back at 11 and tell the mall is closed. I got back into my car and drove to Alameda, and the whole trip, from 101 to 280 to 80 took me all of about 25 minutes. NOBODY was on the road and time seemed to stand still. It was one of the longest days of my life as it seemed as if I had nothing to do and yet it was only 12 noon.
I'll remember what happened that day for the rest of my life, as I'm sure everyone will. Hopefully the next generations won't live through something like that, and what transpired on September 11, 2001, is an event that, god granting, will never happen again.
My prayers and thoughts go out to the families of the ones who were killed, and I hope swift justice befalls the person/people who planned this horrible catastrophe.
