When the attacks began on September 11th 2001, I was in a cubicle working as a credit analyst for Cingular Wireless.
I remember watching the first fire burning at the world trade center in the breakroom with a crowd of co-workers... thinking it was some horrible accident... when the second plane hit.
I remember the sounds in that breakroom after the second plane hit.
As another poster said earlier... I felt like puking.
...then the Pentagon... and Shanksville...
I remember watching TV for days... hour after hour... hoping that just one more survivor would be pulled out of the mess... somehow.
I remember the fires at the WTC site burned for more than a MONTH!
I remember an ache that I've never had before or since... and a longing... to be there to help... If I could only shift one beam... or remove one block of concrete...
... if I could only make sandwiches and give water, or a place to rest... to just one person coming out... or going in.
I remember that it felt like I held my breath for ages.
I remember... and am not ashamed to say that I cried my eyes out... when our national anthem was played at Buckingham Palace. I think I let it all out of me right then.
I remember that I never again wanted to work at a job... where I couldn't help someone...
So I went back to school and took up a new profession far more useful to the human race... and where it really mattered that I get up and go to work every day.
Whatever I have done since, only amounts to a drop in the ocean, but in that small way... hate and intolerance were kicked in the face.
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