I remember watching a CRT television belted to a five-foot tall roller stand, and we had suspended all classes that day, even though we were at school. We had just sat there, crying and watching the news, as both towers were smoking, then one had collapsed and myself and other kids had screamed, wailed, and one vomited there on the carpet. Occasionally someone would get pulled away to take a phone call, and they didn’t come back the same. They changed. We all changed.
I still remember Kevin Cosgrove’s last phone call.
For me, it was my first day at Texas Instruments. I had to show up to a mandatory Outlook training session (which was hilarious as I was being hired for a helpdesk position. I’d used Outlook since the first version in 1997 and supported it…). A guy came in and turned on the televisions.
I called my wife, who was working in the flight path of DFW airport. We also tried to get hold of my stepmother, who was working in the tallest building in downtown Dallas at the time.
It was much chaos, as I’m sure you remember, as nobody really knew what was going on or what further attacks might happen.
So for me, I was a young adult, married for about a year and a half when it happened - I got to live half a decade as an adult in the pre-9/11 world.
It’s hard for me to remember that for newer generations, all this bullshit that really started taking off hardcore after 9/11 is normalized. I saw our rights being taken away, the constant fear increase, the hatred for Muslims that blossomed into racism coming back out of its dirty closet, the rise of fascism.
I remember watching a CRT television belted to a five-foot tall roller stand, and we had suspended all classes that day, even though we were at school. We had just sat there, crying and watching the news, as both towers were smoking, then one had collapsed and myself and other kids had screamed, wailed, and one vomited there on the carpet. Occasionally someone would get pulled away to take a phone call, and they didn’t come back the same. They changed. We all changed.
I still remember Kevin Cosgrove’s last phone call.
Newberg, Oregon, September 11th ‘01.
For me, it was my first day at Texas Instruments. I had to show up to a mandatory Outlook training session (which was hilarious as I was being hired for a helpdesk position. I’d used Outlook since the first version in 1997 and supported it…). A guy came in and turned on the televisions.
I called my wife, who was working in the flight path of DFW airport. We also tried to get hold of my stepmother, who was working in the tallest building in downtown Dallas at the time.
It was much chaos, as I’m sure you remember, as nobody really knew what was going on or what further attacks might happen.
So for me, I was a young adult, married for about a year and a half when it happened - I got to live half a decade as an adult in the pre-9/11 world.
It’s hard for me to remember that for newer generations, all this bullshit that really started taking off hardcore after 9/11 is normalized. I saw our rights being taken away, the constant fear increase, the hatred for Muslims that blossomed into racism coming back out of its dirty closet, the rise of fascism.
It wasn’t always that way. :(