Adapted from a post I wrote in my original A Certain Point of View blog on Google’s Blogger platform.
If you were to ask me if I remember what happened on Monday, September 10, 2001, I would have to be honest and say “Nothing, really.” I surely must have walked my six-year-old Labrador retriever, done some ghostwriting work for a (now former) client and chatted online with friends and my (now ex-) girlfriend. It was quite an ordinary day, and September 11, 2001 promised to be just one more ordinary day, not just for me, but for nearly 300 million Americans and the rest of the world.
As it turned out, however, a man named Osama Bin Laden and his followers in a terrorist organization named Al Qaeda (The Base) had other ideas, and September 11, 2001 turned out to be our generation’s Day of Infamy.
On that Tuesday morning 22 years ago, I woke up a bit after 8:30 AM; I made my way downstairs and went through the usual routine of serving myself a bowl of cold cereal and making two cups of coffee in a Mr. Coffee brewer. As the coffee brewed (making those weird gurgling sounds that some coffeemakers do during the brewing process), I went to the front door, picked up that morning’s copy of the Miami Herald, then automatically walked over to the TV set and turned it on.
It must have been 8:48 AM by then; Good Morning America was on the air and already Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson were talking (offscreen) with ABC News reporters on the ground in New York City about a possible accidental collision of a plane – possibly a commuter plane or small personal aircraft – with the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Now, I can’t recall exactly everything that was said on that broadcast, but I do remember that there was a lot of confusion and speculation about that first crash, which we now know was American Airlines Flight 11, which had been hijacked by five Al Qaeda operatives after taking off from Boston’s Logan International Airport.
Some of the theories/rumors/comments went something like this:
“An accident along the lines of the B-25 Mitchell bomber which hit the Empire State Building in late 1945.”
“A small commuter plane must have had a malfunction or the pilot died of a heart attack.”
“Someone said they thought they had seen a missile being fired at the building.”
“It was a big jetliner.”
Because Mom was then living in the master bedroom upstairs and rarely turned on her TV, I ran up the stairs, yelling, “Mom! Turn on the TV! There was a plane crash in Manhattan!”
Mom was brushing her teeth at that moment, so she asked me to turn it on while she finished her oral hygiene routine.
By then, ABC’s cameras had zoomed out a bit and I could see the North Tower standing against that clear blue September sky; a gash could be seen between the 93rd and 99th floors and angry red flames licked the base of a black plume of smoke.
Suddenly, at the 9:03 AM mark – just as Mom sat down on her bed to watch – we saw a twin-engine airliner (United 77) fly straight into the South Tower and hit Floors 78 through 84.
“That,” I thought, “was no accident.”
And on the heels of that, “That’s like the climax of Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor.” (In that 1994 Jack Ryan novel, a vengeance-driven Japanese airline pilot crashes a Japan Airlines 747 on the U.S. Capitol and kills the President and most of the high ranking members of the government in one fell swoop during a joint session of Congress.)
Of course, there was much worse to come: the collapse of the Twin Towers and the deaths of nearly 3000 people in less than one hour, the news that American Airlines Flight 175 had struck the Pentagon and that another plane (United Flight 93) was on a track for another target in Washington, DC but had crashed in Pennsylvania flooded the airwaves, and every network kept looping the impact of the jetliner against the North Tower almost endlessly.
I had always wondered how the average American had felt on Sunday, December 7, 1941 when the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reached the nation via radio broadcasts.
Sadly, now I knew. My country had been attacked. America was – and still is – at war against terrorists.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
Comments
8 responses to “September 11, 2001 Plus 22 Years: Time Has Passed, But The Memories Are Still Vivid”
It’s still hard to watch that plane hit those towers. A sad day of remembrance.
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Yes, it is difficult to watch any documentaries or movies about September 11.
It’s even harder, though, to read social media comments from people who to this day claim 9/11 was an inside job. I saw one of those today on Facebook.
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It never goes away.
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My memories of that day are similar, but I turned on the television after i got my husband and kids off to work and school. I remember the sorrow and uncertainty we lived with for days.
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Hello Alex, I have tried to leave comments on your website for several days but I was totally blocked out. It was impossible. It looks like it might be possible again with some effort. I left a post/comment on FB and messenger about it but I got no response, so I don’t know if you saw it.
As for the trailer, which I saw a few days ago, it is genuinely great, Alex! 🏆🥇🥂 That trailer should bring in readers if it is spread around. I am very much looking forward to your book. As for the weather, that day, a few days ago, we had 109 degrees, 115 real feel, here in Dallas, but now it is significantly below 100 and we’ve had a couple of thunderstorms. I am glad to see that hurricane Lee will stay away from Florida.
About 9/11, it certainly was a crazy day. I was taking my younger son to preschool when the first plane hit. They said it was a terrible accident. Then as I was on my way to work the second plane hit and now it was clear that it was no accident. When I came to work everyone was huddled around a very large computer screen. I should say Texas is one hour behind New York and Florida, so it was earlier in Texas. I also remember that they were showing footage in Sweden that was censored (for good reason) in the US, for example people jumping off the building.
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WordPress has been unkind to users for a while now. For instance, I can only comment on Patti’s posts if I do so from the Reader area of WP. If I try to do it from Patti’s actual page, it asks me to log in, which is rather silly cos I’m already logged on. (I did see your Facebook comments, but I could have sworn I replied on WP regarding this very topic of issues with comments. I also saw that message when I was still sleepy, so if I didn’t reply…I apologize. I wasn’t being deliberately rude.
Re the trailer: I’m surprised that Popcorn Sky Productions found so much stock footage that fits the themes of the excerpt from “Reunion.” I’m glad you liked the finished trailer: I adapted the excerpt and chose the underscore…Juan wants me to emphasize this, since “all he did” (in his own terms) was to edit the stills and video clips together. (Feel free to share the trailer, if you like!) 🙂
As for the new book…hopefully I’ll finish the novel in time for Christmas. Some chapters and/or scenes have been harder to write/edit than I thought they would be.
September 11 was, as I say in my post, our generation’s Pearl Harbor moment.
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The amazing thing is I can now leave a comment on your blog if I login, even though I am already logged in, and then login a second time (or actually third time), and then reload the page (in that order), but before it didn’t matter what I did, the reply button was always greyed out. I would never think that you didn’t answer because you were rude, I just wanted you to see the comment so you know what is going on. By the way would you mind if I use your blog as a sample when I contact the Happiness Engineers about this, because it is a bug?
I reported a bug regarding the twenty sixteen theme that I just switched to and they said they are working on it (after seven years).
I can certainly share the trailer. It is a good ad for your upcoming book.
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Sure, go ahead. Use my blog (and Patti’s, too) as part of your bug report.
Oh, and the trailer is for the existing book in the Reunion Duology. I’m still grappling with the second one. That having been said, every share of the video…every sale of the novella…helps.
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