I'll never forget that morning, getting a chicken biscuit from the campus Chick-fil-A and buying the new They Might Be Giants album Mink Car at Borders.
I happened to have that day off work, which was nice, as it gave me time to do course work and listen to Mink Car, the then-new album by They Might Be Giants.
my parents woke me up early to panic in my face about it. on new year's day 2001 they had woken me up to scream and cry about my uncle killing himself so 9/11 was definitely anticlimactic after that
Jeremy wrote:If you want a vision of the future, imagine a sarcastic serf - forever.
I was in college and as it happened I only had two classes that day, both of which were in the morning, and the second of which was after the towers fell. (I was in my first class as it happened.) The professor of my second class allowed anyone to leave if they felt they needed to. No one did.
The university canceled all classes scheduled after 12 pm that day, which, as I said, had no effect on me.
my dad sent me to my moms apartment on the other side of the apartment complex. i think i "faked" sick (had some mixture of latent anxiety/depression that was making me nauseous) and ended up going back home for the day. i went to the computer and played diablo 2 while the tv was on, tunes to mtv like i normally did. i was really confused as to why mtv had cut to a national news event. my dad was also sick and called out of work. he went out to chick fil a or something to get us breakfast and i told him that the twin towers had fallen and he thought i was fucking with him.
i remember being really annoyed i couldnt watch toonami or invader zim that day, in general, i seem to remember every tv i saw was tuned to cable news for the next several months. my vision of this is limited but it really felt like the start of modern deathwish cable news formats as i know it.
i remember feeling an intense sense of dread when i realized how much racism would be provoked by the attacks (i think texas might have been the first place any notable violence happened, i seem to remember a muslim gas station employee being murdered about a week later) that's sadly even more accurate 18 years later.
this event also i think pretty much ruined country radio. it was like a year before tim mcgraw's "red ragtop" was banned from the charts for having a non-judgmental depiction of a couple getting aborted (its a beautiful song imo). the dixie chicks shit. this fucking thing
that may be arguable to some but i'd take a million "i like beer and chicks with short shorts and big butts" songs to the tune of kenny chesneys "she thinks my tractors sexy" or tim mcgraw's "something like that" over what was to come.
I remember being in 3rd period English and there was an announcement over the PA right after the bell rang and literally nobody cared. That is my 9/11 memory.
i don't remember how my teachers reacted but my partner was in kindergarten at the time and she said they would do huddle talks about how there are some very evil people in the world but we shouldnt worry because america is great etc. i seem to remember my sister saying something similar.
in terms of like, personal effect on my psyche, the first major event i remember that really rattled my psyche/perceptions of the united states as a Good Country was the 2000 election. it didn't help that it didn't seem like anybody in my elementary school reacted to it whatsoever. that 9-10 month stretch just feels completely apocalyptic in my head even moreso than any particular day i guess.