9/11 - My Memories

So, I meant to write about 9/11 yesterday.... on 9/11. Obviously, I never got around to it, so I'm doing it today.

It's crazy how 6 years later, I can still bawl like a fricken baby when I hear recordings or see video of the whole event. Then again, I can watch old footage of the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack and tear up knowing that so many men were dead or waiting to die under that water. Steve Harvey was playing soundbites of people's reactions in NYC that day and it was heartwrenching. Rick Dees read an email from a woman in New Jersey who is fed up with Muslims complaining about their so-called poor treatment in Iraq and Abu-Graib (spelling?). Like the lady says, they still got it better than the people who perished on 9/11 or who have had their heads hacked off by insurgents. Like she said so eloquently, "I don't care." Too bad. (I'll have to find that letter and post it up so you can read it yourselves.)

Anyway, yesterday everyone was mentioning how they remembered exactly where they were when they became aware of the attacks. I remember where I was:

I woke up that morning to one of my sisters telling me that some crazy stuff was kicking off in New York. We stayed glued to the TV the entire morning horrified and then were mortified when the towers collapsed before our eyes. We were utterly terrified. No one had to tell me that this was an attack and all I could think was that 1) L.A. would be the next major city on the hit list, and 2) my dad works directly in Downtown. We were so scared that we literally called my dad and begged him to leave work... just in case. He refused and said we were being ridiculous. (Thanks, Dad; we are in a crisis here... lol). I now know, as a County employee, they wouldn't have let him leave anyway.

The three of us, the sisters, all had to work that day up at Main Gate at Magic Mountain. We all called in. We didn't get resistence though because the park wasn't going to be up-and-running that day (by the way, aside from the two times we had rolling blackouts and closed mid-way through the day, that was the only time in my history at Six Flags that they closed the park for a full day.)

My sisters, my mom, and I were all upset. We were all crying. I knew that out world was never gonna be the same. (After we had found out that it could possibly radical Muslim terrorists, I remember telling my mother that if they somehow invaded and tried to take over, I would let them cut my head off before I would deny Jesus. I meant it too. I was mad.) Needless to say, we were all in shock. Then we decided we needed to do something, so we all loaded up into the car and drove to the Red Cross to give blood. That is a lot for me, people. Before then, you were not going to see me sticking a needle in my arm willingly. We got there and they turned us away because they already had too many people. That's kind of awesome. I guess that is just one littel example of how their attempt to instill fear in and exact revenge on us only brought us together... well for a little while at least.

When I finally visited Ground Zero last year, I really didn't feel anything, at first. You go there and it's just this square hole in the ground with trucks and cranes inside.... it looks like your average construction site, only there are pictures by NYC photographers of the towers before and during the attacks lining the fence and notes of love, rememberance, and encouragement scrawled on scaffolding, and there are two police officers guarding the entrance. It's not until you go into the visitors center and hear the audio and see artifacts from the site (credit cards, paperwork, company IDs, a dead firefighter's uniform that was ripped right off of him) and the LONG list of names of the dead, and you read the notes from children that say "miss you daddy," that you get all torn up inside and feel the depth of what happened on that sacred ground (whoa, I'm totally tearing up right now). All it does is renew that drive in you to never forget and to keep fighting for what is right.

Yeah, I remember that day vividly. Just like those who were alive for Pearl Harbor, I will never forget where I was and how I felt. I will never forget that at it's heart, this is a good country, founded on good morals based on the Bible, and the only way for us to keep moving on and thriving the way we do is to keep it that way...