Yeah Right!

I remember it exactly. Though these two words were not at first memorable, they are now indelibly ingrained upon my thoughts. I remember the moment when my co-workers Petra and Attila came to me and told me of the tragic occurrence of a plane hitting one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

Yeah right. Of course I didn't believe them. C'mon, I mean what are the chances of a plane not seeing a huge towering building looming in front of it and then crashing into it? Little did I know that though that thought was technically correct I was mistaken about the crash. I remember sitting there watching it on the news just moments after it occurred.

The miracle of live television allowed me to feel a great sadness at this terrible accident. I remember sitting there on the bed watching the tower burn and hoping that loss of life would be minimal. To say I was stunned watching the billowing black smoke seep from the windows of the broken building was an under exaggeration. In this day and age and with the technology that is invested in and placed onto these planes, I could not entirely understand how this accident could have occurred.

How could it have happened? Obviously there must have been some sort of malfunction on the plane. Maybe they had some catastrophic mishap in an engine, which forced the plane into the tower. What a horrendous tragedy.

Never did I think it was anything other than an accident. I remember the news reporter talking and then the camera angle changing. I remember a second plane being centered into the screen and focused upon and then the unthinkable.

I watched, paralyzed in shock as the second plane took aim on the second tower and with exacting deliberation, shattered any and all thoughts that this was a mistake.

The second crash made it abundantly clear that this was a purposeful act of destruction. I realized that this event was solely designed to take lives, and as many of them as possible. I watched the events unfold with tears in my eyes as I realized the amount of lives that surly must have been lost.

How could such a horrible thing happen here? All those innocent people killed and for what? Two wounded towers with so much flame and smoke spilling out that it darkened the sky around them. The reports coming through that the efforts of emergency personnel trying to reach the victims was hampered by the flow of people trying to extricate themselves from the belly of the beast.

What terrible nightmare must each person be in as they tried to escape the carnage of the towers? I watched in utter horror as the top floors of the tower collapsed downward onto the lower floors and then in the blink of en eye, the tower was gone. The tv showed me an angle of people running away from the falling building. People being chased by this great terrible black cloud of dust and debris as if the dying building was expelling its last breath on this earth.

To see the sheer terror on the faces of the people who ran as fast as they could to get away from this death cloud was overwhelming. To call it anything other than a death cloud would be to lessen the amount of lives lost in its making.

My god. I thought. The people.

How many perished in the one small instant of time? How many souls were lost to the madness of this day? As we sat there watching the tower fall, the room fell silent. Maybe it was the silence one has for reverence of souls passed but more likely it was the shock of seeing so many people die in one single moment.

Shortly there after the second tower groaned in pain and then relinquished its life to the day of Sept. 11. I kept thinking that more people must have died in this one instant of time than any other in American history. So many questions formed in my thoughts. Why? Who? I never even thought terrorist, not in the sense that most of us think.

Yes, at first I thought perhaps the pilots did it and then I remember thinking, but two pilots, on the same day.

Then I thought it was a domestic terrorist in the type of a Timothy McVeigh. I didn't think foreign terrorist, after all, this is America.

When news came in about the Pentagon I began thinking the United States was under attack. They showed us pictures of a Pentagon damaged by third plane. Its insides exposed through a gash created from the power of a thought. After all, this all started with a simple thought in some madman's head.

After seeing the reports on the Pentagon I was worried about how long the attacks would go on before we were able to gain control again and stop the madness. I understood in a way the pentagon being attacked, after all it is a military installation, but I felt a considerable anger at the loss of innocents in the towers.

Why them? Why specifically target people who do not carry weapons, whose sole defense against harm is a cell phone and a business suit? I felt a surge of hatred for those who did this and I wanted vengeance for the victims of this most heinous act of cowardice.

Later I heard about the plane crashing in Pennsylvania and though at first the reports were unsure if it was part of the attack, it was reported later that this plane was possible headed for the white house and the reason it came down where it did was because the passengers refused to let the hijackers have their way.

These people are heroes, for who knows how many lives they saved with their selfless act of fighting back. When I think back to that day now I feel the tears well up at the loss of life and of the heroic emergency personnel who sacrificed their lives to try and save the victims of a thoughtless and cowardly attacker.

By L. M. S. III Copyright © 2004