I was working the ER. It was slow that morning so we kept going back to the TVs in the waiting area to get more info. I was standing there with one of my favorite docs, a former fighter pilot. This guy was the most calm, cool dude I’d ever met and I’d never seen him show anger even under the most justifiable circumstances. Now he was teared up and growling, “we’ll get them,” over and over to himself as we both realized that what we were watching were people jumping from the buildings into the street. We realized the choice these people were forced to make in the lsst act of their lives. That is burned into my psyche forever. I remember a bunch of firemen carrying their chaplain who was killed buy a falling body while giving extreme unction to a fellow fireman who had been hit previously by another falling body.
We all were in shock throughout the morning and afternoon. I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t change my lifestyle a bit based on fear, not to let these bastards get an inch of my life. I wouldn’t sell stock based on a fearful reaction to this—nothing, these motherfuckers wouldn’t get a thing out of me. I took this stance when some guy on TV said SEC or some Wall Street official said that they wouldn’t allow this to affect the market, that they would advocate calm and stoicism. I was very disappointed in the massive chicken-shit sell-offs when the market re-opened. What a bunch of cowardly scum, I thought. One hit and all these suits start running in panic like a bunch of screaming little schoolgirls. I went kind of “I don’t give a shit” crazy and started buying in a patriotic fervor and eventually made back all I’d lost in the internet stocks the previous year. I was all for the Afghanistan operation thinking it was to be focused, surgical, effective and justifiable. Totally against the Iraq invasion nearly three years later.
I’ll be at the helm of a sailboat from Pensacola to the drydock in St. Petersburg for it’s owner on 911. I’ll be somewhere off the pristine coast around Cedar Key. I will definitely be thinking of those people and how lucky I am to live my life this way and mourn the fact that they will never experience what I will be experiencing that day. I hope for serene waters and a pod of dolphins.
@Cruiser Did they tell the passengers what it was all about while you were still on the plane?