September 11, 2001. A Day the World Stood Still.

As I watched my twitterfeed this morning, I was flooded with tweets on how many people remembered EXACTLY what they were doing that day.  I was one of those people.  I remember it vividly.

I was working at Champion Glass as an office manager.  We had gone to the deli next door to get our normal breakfast order for the office and the road guys.  We had just came back to the office when we realized we had forgotten one of the coffees. I offered to go over and retrieve the coffee.

I walked into the deli at 8:48am, 2 minutes after the first plane hit.  They had a TV up in the corner of the deli. Everyone stood there and watched in horror.  I didn't realize what happened until I stood there for a moment listening to the commentary. At this point I had forgotten about the coffee.  I stood there in awe for what felt like forever.  In reality it was a mere 15 minutes later.  At 9:03 we watched in horror as the second plane hit the other tower.  At this time, my boss had come over with another co-worker to see what happened to me.  We didn't have a TV on in the office, so they did not know what was going on.    They stood next to me as we all watched 09/11 unfold before our eyes. 

My dad was a NY firefighter and one of the office girls had an uncle who worked in one of the towers.  None of us felt like being there.  It was eery as we also were right down the road from an airport, MacArthur, and it was deadly quiet.  Police cars racing up the road to the airport. I remember that my boss made us cancel all of our appointments for the day.  I remember most of our vendors were pissed that we would not be installing windshields or delivering glass that day.  My boss didn't care, it all seemed trivial compared to what was going on.  He let us all go home, where I sat on the couch with my then boyfriend (now husband), his sister, my young nephew and my brother in law.  We all stared at the TV.  The day took forever.  The images forever engraved in our minds.  Something that we will never forget. Something we will always remember.

Ask me what I did this morning, I probably could not give you a detailed account for my actions.  Ask me what I was doing on the 11th day of September in 2001, I can recall most every thing I did or felt that day with such vivid detail.