JABbering Stooge

The event about which our progeny will ask the infamous “Where Were You When…” question.

Six years. It was six years ago today that Osama’s Wrecking Krew™ slapped us silly - to the tune of almost 3,000 dead.

At the time, I was just starting my senior year at Carnegie Mellon. I was walking across campus to my 9:00 AM class when the first plane hit. No one in my class that day had been watching the news, so I spent the next hour unaware of the horror that was going down on the other side of the Eastern Time Zone. After class, I went up to the Modern Language department’s computer lab to finish up some homework for my Buddhist Influences on Japanese Language class. It was there that I learned of the hell that had been unleashed while I was in the bubble.

At first, I was paying more attention to my work than what was going on around me (I had procrastinated far too long on the assignment). It wasn’t until I was putting the final pieces together that I noticed that no one else was doing any work, and that the TV was showing an endless loop of the North Tower collapsing. Confused, I asked what the hell was going on, and after getting some dirty looks for being out of the loop, eventually began to piece together what I had missed. All of a sudden, my presentation on the martial arts aspect of Buddhism and Japanese language didn’t seem so important anymore.

Eventually, I wandered over to the University Center, where a bunch of people had gathered around the hastily assembled TV cluster in mute horror. Somewhere between the Language Lab and the University Center, I had heard local news reportage of United 93, and that the military base in Westmoreland County was on lockdown. I decided to watch the coverage of the unfolding tragedy for a few minutes before grabbing a bite to eat. How I managed an appetite that day is still a mystery to me. I was probably just going through the motions, anyway.

After eating, I went back to my room and phoned home. My parents were so relieved, as they’d been trying to reach me ever since hearing about the fate of United 93. Turns out that they were moving into their current house that day, and that once the TV was hooked up, nothing else got moved that day. Once I had assured my parents that I was fine, I fired off an e-mail to my Japanese host family, explaining the situation (I had spent the summer on a six-week study abroad program in the Tokyo metropolitan area). They were understandably appalled at the day’s events, but relieved that I was okay. Having assured the world that I was still here, I went back to supergluing my eyes to the news.

It was America’s Darkest Day™. Little did we know, it was about to get a whole lot worse.

Coda: When classes resumed the next day, my Policy Analysis professor devised a rather…unique way of “helping” us cope with what had just happened. He had us engage in a cost/benefit analysis of terrorism. It more or less went down along the same path as that special post-9/11 epsiode of The West Wing. While none of the students engaged in any blatant Muslim-bashing, there were already rumors of anti-Muslim violence occurring in the Pittsburgh area.