The Living Room Times

I remember waking up at 6:50 AM Pacific Time, eight years ago today, to the sound of Becky’s voice talking frantically into my answering machine (my phone’s ringer had been turned off), saying something about how we were under attack by terrorists. I didn’t catch all the details because I was too groggy, having gone to bed around 3:00 AM (I didn’t have any morning classes on Tuesdays), but I gathered that I needed to get up and turn on the TV, so I did.

I remember that the TV was tuned to ABC, because of Monday Night Football the night before. I remember that, when I turned it on that Tuesday morning at 6:51 AM, they were showing a full-screen image of smoke rising from the Pentagon — which was breaking news at that moment, whereas the WTC attacks had been ongoing for more than an hour. But I didn’t know that, and I remember thinking something along the lines of, “Holy shit, the Pentagon was attacked! Wow, that’s huge, I understand why Becky called to wake us up.”

Then ABC switched to a split screen: the burning Twin Towers on the left, the burning Pentagon on the right. I don’t really remember precisely what I thought in that moment — it was too shocking and horrible and incomprehensible for a fully coherent thought, I suppose. In any event, that’s how I learned about the Pentagon attack perhaps 30 seconds before I learned about the WTC attack.

I remember my roommate Cameron, even groggier than I, stumbling out of our room a few moments later, and saying something like, “Was she kidding?” — meaning Becky, in her phone message — “because if she was kidding, I’m going to kill her.” No, I responded, she wasn’t kidding. America was under attack.

I remember my Dad calling to inform me that my mom, who was in New York that day, was fine. I actually hadn’t been worried at all; my mom is just not a Financial District kind of gal, so it was inconceivable to me that she would have been anywhere near the attack. Her home base in Manhattan, the apartment my parents used to rent there, was some 10 miles north of the WTC, literally about as far away from Downtown as you can get while still being in Manhattan.

In any case, I remember that my Dad started out by saying, “This is like one of your earthquake calls.” He was referring to the time, two years earlier, when I’d awoken my parents in the middle of the night to tell them there had been earthquake in L.A., but that I was fine. He figured his call might similarly wake me up. In fact, I was already up and watching the atrocity live on TV.

I remember, vaguely, the first WTC tower collapsing, just a few minutes after I woke up. I say “vaguely” because that moment, actually, wasn’t particularly shocking to me, oddly enough. I think I was on the phone with my Dad, or listening to a voicemail message from him, or something, when it happened. In any case, it seemed perfectly logical to me at the time: the building was attacked, there were huge explosions, there was a massive fire, and now it’s collapsing. Of course. I guess I hadn’t been watching for a long enough time to conceive of the possibility that it might not collapse. Nor, I think, did I fully grasp the enormity of what was occurring — that I was actually witnessing, live, the deaths of many hundreds of people.

I remember trying, along with Cameron, to reassure the girls from down the hall, who eventually came down to our room to watch the coverage live. They were freaking out about the rumors of a fourth hijacked plane heading toward the West Coast. So were we, of course, but I guess we felt it was our manly duty to comfort them, or something. So we tried. In retrospect, some of the arguments we used to deflect the notion that we personally were in danger seem rather laughable, most notably my contention that terrorists wouldn’t attack USC because it isn’t prominent enough — surely they’d go for UCLA instead. (I wasn’t trying to be funny, mind you. This actually seemed reassuring at that moment.)

I remember learning, some hours later, that Becky’s brother had had an interview in the WTC scheduled for that afternoon, and had planned to get there early and watch the sunrise from the top of the towers, but was diverted from this plan because he had accidentally left his dress shoes in L.A., and had to buy new ones. As a result, he was in Midtown when the attacks happened. I remember being very grateful that Becky didn’t know any of this until after we knew he was safe.

I remember trying to get news on the attacks via the Internet, and finding that basically all of the major news websites were either offline or stripped down to basic HTML because of the unprecedented traffic load.

I remember feeling that, as an East Coaster and a New Englander who grew up in Connecticut and spent a lot of time in New York City as a kid, and who had been up the WTC twice, including once just three months before 9/11, the attack was somehow more personal for me than for a lot of the West Coasters at USC.

I remember the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I thought of the WTC employee whom I’d met, and briefly conversed with, during my recent visit to the observation deck.

In fact, I remember feeling a sinking feeling in my stomach pretty much all day. I’m not a very emotional person normally. But on 9/11, I went around all day, feeling as if I had literally been punched in the gut.

I remember quickly becoming very worried about potential reprisals against innocent Muslim-Americans, on campus and elsewhere.

I remember running out that day to buy a portable TV, thinking that it was essential I have the ability to watch the news at any moment, wherever I was.

I remember thinking that my one class that day, an afternoon political science course called Middle East Politics taught by Richard Dekmejian, would surely be canceled because Dr. Dekmejian would be in high demand for local media interviews. He was — but he held class anyway, and turned it into an impromptu teach-in on the three groups he said could potentially be responsible (the Palestinians, the Iraqis, or Al Qaeda).

I remember missing Bill Clinton for a while, when President Bush kept making unsatisfying statements and then disappearing from view. I remember thinking that Karen Hughes’s statement was actually more forceful than the president’s. I remember feeling that Bush redeemed himself with his excellent speech that evening (and again, many times over, with his superb address to Congress nine days later).

I remember that it took several days before it truly sunk in that this was different from the Oklahoma City Bombing not just in scale, but in type — that it would not just lead to a national period of mourning, a grand speech in which the president would feel the victims’ families’ pain, and promise justice and whatnot — that it would instead lead to war.

I remember trying to guess what the next day’s New York Times headline would be, and being way off the mark because I was thinking of a three-line monster typical of a “regular” huge news story, rather than the one-line, “MAN WALKS ON MOON” font size that’s reserved for once-in-a-generation historic moments. I never thought of anything as simple as “U.S. ATTACKED.”

I remember the empty sky. With no airplanes, there is really nothing in the skies over Los Angeles, since there’s far too much light pollution to see the stars. The planes are the “stars” of L.A.’s skies, and there are always tons of them, because USC is right on the east-west route to and from LAX. And then suddenly, there weren’t any. This was positively eerie.

I remember going to the grocery store late that night, trying to find a copy of the Los Angeles Times “Extra” edition, and then walking back to campus. As I was walking back, a car took a sharp turn onto the street I was about to cross. For a brief, paranoid moment, a split second of panic, I was sure that this car was deliberately trying to hit me — an extremely small-scale terrorist attack against me personally, I guess. Obviously, that made zero sense. But then, neither did the events of that morning.

I remember:

 

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