JACK BAUER QUIT. ARE YOU READY?

One thing that being sick and not working does for a person is that it makes time irrelevant. I don't even keep track of my own doctor appointments because I will forget them. I am sometimes completely overcome on Wednesdays when I realize that it is Wednesday. I have that "Oh crap" moment because I have been slack and not been great about finding material for Thursday. Sometimes it is easy. One of you will write something, an alarm sounds in my brain, and I know the perfect piece of footage to go with what you wrote. Those are the gifts. Other times it is harder. I have to go back through all of your posts for the week looking for something to trigger anything in my brain. That is tougher. However, Saturday rarely takes me by surprise, but only because it comes so quickly after Thursday. Thursday is my Saturday alarm.


Last night H-Girl spent the night and we had fun looking at the Cyndi Lauper videos, watching Pretty In Pink, playing board games, and today we painted each other's finger and toenails. Basically it was two days of girl stuff. The only rough part of the whole thing was yesterday when I told her about my life at her age, and how I had my neighbor to talk to about confusing stuff. She was an adult but we had an agreement that anything I said stayed between us. I then told her that anything she said would stay between us. In theory, it was a great idea, but she had nothing to say, so we were back to Square One. However, I am done trying to get her to talk about her grades and school. She knows she can talk to me because I made it crystal clear.

All that said, I had no idea that today was the 11th of September until H-Girl got picked up by her dad, and I sat down at the computer to do my blog reading. (I wrote my blog while H-Girl was was playing her computer game. She had a Moshi pet to feed or something. I don't know what it is, so don't ask me.) Anyway, I felt like someone poured a bucket of cold water on me when I started reading your posts. Holy tomole. I wrote a post on Cher and Cyndi Lauper on the anniversary of 9/11. What in the name of everything that is holy was I thinking? Well, you didn't know that it was 9/11 dumba$$. Clearly. In fact, you are lucky you know what year it is. And lots of days you don't know the names of things or how to spell stuff. Well, that makes it all better.


Cassandra was in the 8th grade when the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. One of her teachers said that this day would be that they would never forget. In fact, everyone would remember precisely what they were doing on this day. I was in my car driving to Columbia, SC, for work. My first stop was at a plant in Lexington, SC, whose name I can't remember. This happens a lot (the not remembering). They were a customer of mine for ten years, so it should be rolling off my tongue, but it isn't. The head of maintenance was a nice man named John. In fact, all of the guys in the maintenance shop were funny and very nice. I was listening to a book on tape or maybe a book on CD, so I wasn't listening to the radio, and I didn't know anything about what was going on when I arrived. When I walked into the shop, one of the guys said, "Can you believe a plane ran into one of the Twin Towers?"

These guys are a bunch of pranksters and I thought they were pulling my leg. So, I didn't believe them. I gave them a lot of "Yeah rights," but they were insistent. They had a radio in the shop and they said, "Listen, it is on the radio." And that is what we did. We stood around this little radio with an antennae and listened. At that time, there was a lot of wonder. Was it an accident? And then the disbelief of another plane coming out of nowhere headed for the other tower. We all just stood there looking at each other in horror. This couldn't be happening. Except that it was. It answered the question about the first plane, and the people on the radio went crazy. Words like "mayhem" and "smoke" and finally "terrorist attack" were being used.

I went from account to account in a daze. The people I spoke to were equally blown over. None of us had seen the event. The maintenance shops are usually not equipped with television sets, so all day long I went from one shop to another hearing it on the radio. Listening to it in my car. Of course, the news just got worse. The Pentagon. The plane going down in Pennsylvania. The people jumping off the tops of the Twin Towers rather than being burned alive. The recordings of the last phone calls from people in the Towers and people on the planes. It was heartbreaking. All of it.


My last stop was the Veterans Hospital back in Augusta. I finally got to a maintenance shop with a television set. Every maintenance worker was sitting around the table, eyes glued to the screen, even though it was the same footage all day long. However, to me, it was all new. I had heard it all day long, but it was the first time I had seen it. The first time I saw I the plane come out of nowhere and smash right into the remaining Twin Tower, I was sitting in the maintenance shop of the Veterans Hospital in Augusta. I watched the people jumping off the towers from there, too. It seems ironic now that I watched all of the horror in a VA Hospital maintenance shop. Probably most of those maintenance workers were also veterans. There was very little talking that day. Usually my customers, across the board, are witty and like to joke around. It is a perk of the job. Not that day. It was hard just doing the job that day. Asking one of them to stop watching the TV so that we could do something as mundane as inventory their bins to see what they needed in terms of supplies. However, that was my job. It was why I was there. So, we did it as fast as possible and then returned to watching the TV.

Juxtaposed against our tragedy was the celebration happening across the world. There were people waving flags like it was a party. They were enjoying our pain. There was so much hate in their hearts for our country that they would like nothing more than to kill us all. It was a lot to take in. If there had been a massive attack on their country and 3000 had been killed, I would have felt nothing but sadness for them. I don't understand hating people that you have never met. I don't understand hating someone because of color, race, religion, or any other belief system. I learned that day there are children being raised to hate us just because we are Americans. There are people whose minds will not be changed. They will hate us until they die. In fact, it is an honor to die if it means that they get to take a good number of Americans with them.



Americans tie themselves into knots to be politically correct. We sure don't want to offend anyone. We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. All of those people who hate us so much have studied us well, and they know that our greatest weakness is ourselves. The more time that goes by, the more slack we get. The more slack we get, the more opportunity they have. And they are just out there waiting. If you think they aren't, they will prove you wrong. If remembering the events of 9/11 are not enough to shake you up, I suggest a few seasons of 24. But, Robin, that is just fiction. If I had told you that terrorists were going to orchestrate an attack wherein they were going to commandeer 4 planes, and ram them into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and possibly the White House, you would have said that was fiction before 9/11. So, armor up kids, because Jack Bauer has retired and there is no one out there ready to save our asses. Our President keeps apologizing for our behavior to other countries when he visits, so I wouldn't count on him when push comes to shove.

It's right about now that I wish I had a really cool superpower. I think I would be Supergirl. I have always wanted to fly, have bullets bounce off me, and do some major ass kicking. Plus you could blow hard enough to put out fire. Shoot fire from your eyes. See through things. Basically, she is Superman, but a girl. I think Superman rocks. Yep, I would definitely be Supergirl. It would be totally cool to save the world. Anyone else interested in joining the Justice League?

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