In 2001, I was a gal with her own apartment, and a live-in boyfriend and his pet African Pygmy Hedgehog. (Don’t judge us, we were poor. And he claimed he was too young to get married…at 23 years old.) I worked at my job that was a 40 minute commute one way. I had been there for 2 years and didn’t like it much. (I told myself if I was there past 5 years, I would kill myself. I was there for 12 years…until they went bankrupt and out of business.)
11 years ago, to the same time of day, I was sitting in my cubicle, just settling in for a day of work. In an office you pretend to not hear everyone else around you, although you can totally hear everyone else around you. People started to talk about a plane crash. Now, I drove past the small Ann Arbor Municipal Airport every day on my way to work. I had just been past it not 10 minutes earlier. I didn’t see any plane crash, I thought to myself.
Then my curly-haired friend came over and told me that two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center.
“Is that in Chicago?” I asked. She replied they were in New York.
I went with her back to her cubicle because her computer had the Internet. (In my peon job, I was not trusted with the Internet until 2003.) A guy who was a military reservist at the time said that there had been a crash at the Pentagon as well. There were rumors of another plane that was headed for the Capitol, but had crashed before it reached its destination.
It seemed sort of exciting. Sort of drove me nuts that there was no TV to get any news from in the building. I went back to my desk to work. Then my boss and his boss came over and told me that if I felt uncomfortable with staying at work, I could go home.
“Hells ya!” Well, I didn’t say that, but that is how I felt. Like a child who had been told school would get out early because a devastating snow storm was on its way.
I tried to call my boyfriend on my cell phone on my way home. No service. Too many people calling each other.
When I got home, my boyfriend was of course asleep, being a 2nd shifter, and oblivious to the world events being broadcast on national television.
“Hey Honey. They let me out of work early because two airplanes hit the World Trade Center. Did you know that was in New York City? We have time before you go to work to go to Toledo. Let’s go to the pet store and pick me out a hamster. Wake up, let’s go.”
He looked at me bewildered and turned on the TV. He continued to watch television until he went to work. I didn’t get to go pick out my hamster until Saturday:(
This post may make it sound like I didn’t care about the September 11th attacks. I watched the television obsessively just like everyone else. After about two weeks of coverage, I got sort of depressed, like everyone else. Like everyone else, I moved on.
Live everyone else, when the eastern part of the country had a giant blackout in August of 2003, I assumed it was terrorist activity. It was not. But it did inconvenience us and our guests a little for our wedding rehearsal.
Bunke Lynn Elizabeth
I did get a hamster. She was orange and I named her Bunke. Did you know Golden Hamsters have a gestation period of 16 days? 14 days after I got my hamster, she had 8 babies. Just so you know, if I had gotten her on 9/11, I wouldn’t have had to find homes for 8 hamsters. (Becoming a grandmother can be really stressful.)
And there you have it. What I remember from the September 11, 2001 attacks. Remember, this blog is about my mildly entertaining random thoughts. If you want a history lesson, you will have to visit Wikipedia.
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