8.09.2006
Insert Foot
My friend and I were emailing back and forth about seeing the new "World Trade Center" movie when my co-worker paid me a visit. We haven't worked together long, and I find that talking about 9/11 is kind of a universal experience. We may have all reacted differently but I think we all felt the same way. Funny how something so painful seems like a safe topic.
Anyway, he commented that he would likely be very upset by the movie. I quickly responded (see assumption above) that we all would be. Then he gently revealed that he was personally affected by this tragedy.
Even then, in my skepticism, I thought about the number of times I have heard that, usually from people working for large companies feeling a connection with lost colleagues they never interacted with...and so on...
No, it was nothing like that I am afraid.
"I lost a team of people, " he said....and it gets worse.
"I was their manager and I had just moved them into the world trade center. our building we getting crowded, so I moved them to our space over there. I hadn't moved yet, I was still in the building across the street."
OK. I guess that's personally affected. My coworker, apparently, was across the street when it all went down and his team, higher in the building than where the plane hit, didn't make it out. One of the guys on the team was one of those classic stories - late to work because he missed his train - and was walking in the first floor just as it all began to unfold. He did make it but only because he was late for work.
I really didn't know what to say.
I love New York. I totally 'get' all the "I heart NY" bumperstickers and t-shirts. I would rather visit there than anyplace else. I even daydream occasionally about living there...realizing, of course, I will have to be independently wealthy. I never saw the WTC. I have seen ground zero - 5 months after and 3.5 years after. When I am in New York, especially on the subway, I look around at all the people and wonder which of them were stuck in Manhattan that day and because of that - being there, seeing it, possibly helping others - I see them all as heroes.
I asked a street vendor in Battery park last year where the towers would have been in relation to where we were standing. Battery park is at the tip of Manhattan where you take the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and not at all far from the world trade center site. The vendor, selling photographs of city scenes, broke into a very rehearsed tale. Describing where the towers were, where the planes came from, how low they were...and I asked if he was there that day. As it turns out, he had never seen the towers either. He moved to NYC post 9/11.
So there you have it - I have stood in the ghost of the WTC shadow listening intently to someone who knew the story as well as I did...but it took a conversation in my cube in Florida to hear the real story from someone who was there to see it. ¶ 22:43
Anyway, he commented that he would likely be very upset by the movie. I quickly responded (see assumption above) that we all would be. Then he gently revealed that he was personally affected by this tragedy.
Even then, in my skepticism, I thought about the number of times I have heard that, usually from people working for large companies feeling a connection with lost colleagues they never interacted with...and so on...
No, it was nothing like that I am afraid.
"I lost a team of people, " he said....and it gets worse.
"I was their manager and I had just moved them into the world trade center. our building we getting crowded, so I moved them to our space over there. I hadn't moved yet, I was still in the building across the street."
OK. I guess that's personally affected. My coworker, apparently, was across the street when it all went down and his team, higher in the building than where the plane hit, didn't make it out. One of the guys on the team was one of those classic stories - late to work because he missed his train - and was walking in the first floor just as it all began to unfold. He did make it but only because he was late for work.
I really didn't know what to say.
I love New York. I totally 'get' all the "I heart NY" bumperstickers and t-shirts. I would rather visit there than anyplace else. I even daydream occasionally about living there...realizing, of course, I will have to be independently wealthy. I never saw the WTC. I have seen ground zero - 5 months after and 3.5 years after. When I am in New York, especially on the subway, I look around at all the people and wonder which of them were stuck in Manhattan that day and because of that - being there, seeing it, possibly helping others - I see them all as heroes.
I asked a street vendor in Battery park last year where the towers would have been in relation to where we were standing. Battery park is at the tip of Manhattan where you take the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and not at all far from the world trade center site. The vendor, selling photographs of city scenes, broke into a very rehearsed tale. Describing where the towers were, where the planes came from, how low they were...and I asked if he was there that day. As it turns out, he had never seen the towers either. He moved to NYC post 9/11.
So there you have it - I have stood in the ghost of the WTC shadow listening intently to someone who knew the story as well as I did...but it took a conversation in my cube in Florida to hear the real story from someone who was there to see it. ¶ 22:43
