five years ago

Right about this time, all I could think about was that if I saw an airplane I was going to take some serious cover.

I was in college. I was in my metals class, which sounds cool to most people, but which I hated. Ugh. I was working on napkin rings, and for some reason I cannot remember now, our assignment was to make three of them. Because three napkin rings=GENIUS. I had already sawed through my finger with the jewelry saw. It was still early and I was barely awake.

Somebody turned on the radio. Slowly, my classmates started to tune in. There was babble about some buildings and some airplanes and some crashes way up there in New York City, where most (but not all; remember I was in an art class) of the people in the room had just read about in books and seen on that there teevee. In San Marcos, Texas, New York City was another world.

It was a joke, right? Planes don't fly into buildings.

...right?

Somebody started to cry. I just sat there. Too much information. Things like that don't happen, they are not real.

It is ludicrous that terrorists would kill people who live in a country just because they don't like the country's government officials. And if I saw an airplane, I was taking serious cover.

They would kill me, my family, my friends, even if we are all anti-Bush.

What is the POINT?

I still have a tough time wrapping my mind around people jumping out of the World Trade Center. I still cringe when I see the towers in old TV sitcoms. I still wonder why.

I have no trouble at all wrapping my heart around the people who lost loved ones, who feel the loss daily, who walk past Ground Zero to get to work. Who are faced with what happened every single day.

I still don't like airplanes.

I am still sorry.

I don't know what else to say.