9/11

We're coming up on the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center.  I guess everyone has one of "those moments" that you never forget where you were.  Kennedy assassination, MLK assassination...are they all assassinations?  Maybe as far as global news goes, only bad things are unplanned.  Anyway, figure it might be a question I get asked in the old folks home (assuming I'm senile enough to agree to go and not overdose on my pain meds.)

I was at UNC-Greensboro in the Interior Architecture program.  I would have been in the program for just a few weeks, so probably still thought I'd make an architect of myself.  I had a class with a gentleman that reminded you of Tom Jones had Tom Jones been taller, and a thug, and English.  It was an art class.  Ugh.  So we were outside drawing...trees.  Useless art teachers.  Show up with a hangover, time to go outside and draw trees.

So I'm sitting there, hating my pencil, because that's whose fault it was that I couldn't draw a tree.  An incredibly excited 50-ish black gentleman comes running up, with the look of a man that is excited to tell people first.  Excited to see confusion.  I've felt like that.  I get it.

I don't remember exactly what he said, because I'd never heard of this building.  I don't know if he said bomb, I don't know if he said planes hit the Twin Towers or the World Trade Center.  All I remember is he had this excited grin and he said, "We're going to war, planes are already in the air".

Our teacher, not quite knowing what was happening, but not wanting to be seen as an English Prick later, said we could leave if we wanted.  So we all did.

I went back to the International dorm that I lived in.  People there were confused, but looking at it like an American thing, way up North.  I watched some footage, and called my boyfriend, or maybe he was my ex at this point.  Probably.  He was going camping.  His reaction was, He can't do anything about it, and if we're getting blown away, he's probably safer in the woods.  I couldn't fault him, but I wanted to be agitated and he was too calm.

Eventually Greensboro got listed as something like number 10 in the list of places likely to be attacked.  Seemed highly unlikely but there's some sort of chemical factory there or something.

I guess that's about it.  I didn't know anyone, I didn't know anyone who knew anyone.  I know there was a really sweet girl in my dorm from Iraq, and I know a friend told her to quit publicizing that at some point.  It's amazing how fast it became an Iraqi problem.