9/11/2006

When I walked into the break room upon arriving at work this morning was confronted with the rebroadcast of MSNBC\’s 9/11/2001 programming, I was taken aback.

While I had it in my mind that today was the 5th Anniversary of the events of 9/11/2001 (And isn\’t it hard to use the word \”Anniversary\” with something like this?  To me, \”Anniversary\” has such a positive connotation, but I digress…), it didn\’t become real to me until I stood there staring at the same images I watched 5 years ago.  But there it was, as it was on that day.  The same broadcast synched up to the minute. 

Most everyone knows where they were that morning.  Most everyone has a story (some small, some not so small) that has a 9/11 connection.  I have many.  I worked as a consultant at the time, thankfully I was working locally.  However my fiancee was in Delaware, and we were 10 short days away from being married on Long Island.  In addition we had reservations at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107th floor of north tower, for September 22nd. 

Sadly I had to find out about that day\’s events when I flipped on KQ92, my radio morning show of choice at the time.  I called Chelle, in Delaware, to ask \”what is going on out there\”.  Much in the same way that people who live on the coasts view themselves at the center of the world, I view Chelle as the sole representative of everything that happens on the east coast. 

By the time I arrived at work it was obvious that not much work was happening.  People were glued to their computers, refreshing CNN.com (or their news website of choice) constantly.  At some point a TV was wheeled out and surprisingly there was only a small group of us who watched… although the area of the building I was in was mostly call centers and they are like shift workers, if they aren\’t on break, they are at their desk. 

I\’ll never forget later that day when one of our Accenture managers told us to basically \”get back to work\”.  Over half of the people I worked with were travelling from out of town; away from their families.  Nearly all had flown into town the morning before, and were faced with the questions of: How they would get back home.  When would planes be flying again?  Do I ever want to get on another plane for the rest of my life?  How could this person (and I use that term loosely) expect these people to \”get back to work\”?  And how do these soulless people end up in management anyway?

For better or worse, life has gone on in the past 5 years.  But I hope everyone takes a moment today to think about the events of that day.  Please share your memories below in the Comments.