[9/11/2002 3:57:40 PM | Andy Kovacs]
"We've begun to long for the pitter-patter of little feet - so we bought a dog. Well, it's cheaper and you get more feet."
- Rita Rudner


[9/11/2002 4:07:08 PM | Andy Kovacs]
Top 5 Places I'd Rather Be Right Now
1) At the dentist
2) In jail
3) Watching a Pauly Shore movie-marathon
4) Eating haggis
5) At a Golden Girls convention


[9/11/2002 10:25:41 AM | Andy Kovacs]
One Year Later
September 11th Remembered

by Andrew Kovacs


The drive into work today was very pleasant. There weren't many cars out on the road. I had the windows down and the Howard Stern show turned way up on my radio. Getting out of my car in the parking lot at work brought back a flood of memories of the same day one year ago.

It was a bright and sunny morning, and the air was cool. I drove to work with the windows down while I listened to The Flaming Lips album, The Soft Bulletin.

I got inside the building and decided to head to the cafeteria to get some coffee. While I was standing in line I overheard two women behind me talking about the Twin Towers.

"I couldn't believe when they said the World Trade Center was bombed," one of them declared incredulously.
"I know. I still don't believe it," the other woman replied.

Me, being the Current Events Guru that I am (note the sarcasm), concluded that they were referring to the attack on the Trade Center in 1993 when a bomb was set off in the underground parking garage. As I was walking away from the cashier, my friend, Wil, came up to me and asked me, "Can you believe they hit the World Trade Center with a plane?"

I stopped dead in my tracks. "What are you talking about, Wil?" I asked.
"You didn't hear?"
"No, I was listening to a cd on the way in."
"Dude, come here. You're going to shit yourself," was Wil's reply as he took my arm and lead me to the television.

There are two tv sets in the cafeteria, each tv set was mounted on the wall and was normally tuned to either the soap operas or ESPN, depending on who was taking lunch. I couldn't hear what was being said because the volume was low and there must have been about a hundred people in there at the time. On the screen was one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen: there was smoke billowing out of a hole in one of the towers. Below the tv set there stood a crying woman, appropriately dressed in black.

I made my way up to my desk and people were milling about. They were confused, upset, shocked, horrified, afraid, bewildered, what have you. Some people were working, or, as I think of it, trying to keep their minds off of what was happening in New York City. Honestly, though, who could really concentrate? There were television sets on the sales floor, also, so I went to one to watch. While I watched the same scene as in the cafeteria, the camera cut away and showed another plane imbedding itself into the other building. Some people in the office screamed. Others cried. I went back to my desk and tried to log onto CNN.com or MSNBC.com. Neither were working due to the high volume of traffic they were receiving.

For what seemed like hours, but was actually only minutes, rumors flew. I heard rumors that it was the Russians. I heard rumors that it was a domestic terrorist. I heard rumors that the first plane was just an accident. Then the Pentagon was hit in the same manner and all airplanes were forced to land. That was when the rumors started that there were nine more airplanes unaccounted for, most likely hijacked by terrorists.

I went back to the television set to see what was happening and hopefully to see people racing out of the building. What I saw instead was the first of the two buildings collapse.

I remembered Star Wars when the Death Star blows up Alderaan. Obi Wan Kenobi, who was on his way to Alderaan aboard the Millennium Falcon, says that he feels a disturbance in the Force, "as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." And that's how I imagined it. That's how I felt. I went back to my desk.

I listened to more rumors for a while longer. I heard that a plane went down in Pennsylvania and that the White House was hit. I heard that a plane was near Camp David. I was finally able to get onto CNN.com, but the pages wouldn't load.

I went back to the tv just in time to see the second building collapse. That was when I went back to my seat and didn't move again for a long time. This probably wasn't the best thing for me to do since I sat near a girl whose father was ex-military so I was forced to sit through her talking about what should be done to whom and who did what to which and why she thinks we should bomb whomever it was she suspected was the culprit.

The company let us go home early that day. My friend, Steve, had told me to read Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy so I went to Borders Books and Music and picked up a copy of it. The woman at the cash register wouldn't stop talking about what had happened and why she thinks we would all be dead by the end of the year anyway. I remember she remarked as I was (finally) walking away that she hoped I was a fast reader.

I went home and couldn't find it in me to start the book. I had to see for myself what was happening. I needed to seperate the truth from all the crap I'd heard at work. I tuned into CNN and the rest is history.

Looking back, it's been one hell of a year. Sporting events stopped. Broadway was rocked and its future was briefly in doubt. Everywhere you went you couldn't avoid hearing God Bless the U.S.A. by Lee Greenwood, nor could you avoid seeing the American flag attached in some way to everyone's car. Hollywood started to pull their punches and everyone, with few exceptions, seemed to be walking on eggshells. We don't want to offend those who lost someone in the disaster and we don't want to seem unfair to Mid-Easterners who have been living here, quite peacefully, for years and had nothing to do with 9/11. Air traffic was even stopped for a couple of days.

Eventually baseball started again, football and the airlines all got back into the swing of things. It was good to see the country start to get back on its feet after having been hit in our collective solar plexus by a wrecking ball the size of Rosie O'Donnell coming out of an all-you-can-eat Chinese Buffet.

Airport security started to get tougher. Many people are still afraid to fly. There have been questions and theories as to why no one knew on September 10 about the imminent terrorist attacks. The president came under fire. The public and politicians started to cast a scrutinizing eye toward the law enforcement and intelligence agencies that maybe should have known. All of a sudden the comeraderie and unity that we all found immediately post 9/11 was gone and people started to bicker and point fingers.

John Walker Lindh was found among the Taliban. People of this country want his head on a stick. He most likely won't get a fair trial. Speaking of trials, in a year when the people of this country have looked inward for strength and looked toward God as a Pillar, He was taken away. He was taken because one man, who is an atheist, didn't think his daughter, who is not an atheist, should be subjected to having to say and/or hear the Pledge of Allegiance, which contained the phrase "under God", in school everyday. Is it really any wonder that this man is divorced?

It has been quite a year. One that will never be forgotten. Many people ask, "Do you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot?" I don't. Of course, I was born 12 years after the fact. People also ask, "Where were you when the Challenger blew up?" I was in school that day. Where were you? Now this new generation can have an answer when someone asks, "Where were you when the World Trade Center fell?"

Well? The question begs answering: Where were you when the World Trade Center fell?