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Five years ago...
September 11, 2006I have officially stopped watching news coverage of 9/11.
I'm tired of the political spin after five years. So much of it just doesn't seem right to talk about, especially today.
Five years ago....good lord it seems like a lifetime.
Five years ago....I was still living in Fort Worth, going to Tarrant County College trying to put my life back together.
I had gone through a pretty rough stretch and was pretty much absorbed in classes and nothing else.
That morning...I woke up late, as usual. I didn't have classes until 10:30....just the way I liked it. I got in the truck about 10 a.m. and turned it to sports talk radio.
I could tell that something wasn't right....pretty much right from the start. My usually humerous morning show was a much more somber tone.
I wasn't really listening to them, I figured somebody important had died, probably a sports figure of some sort. Things didn't start sinking in until they described watching the first tower collapse right about the same time that I was driving around the parking lot.
I sat in my car for a few minutes, trying to understand what had just happened....then I ran. RAN....into the student center, where the closest television was located. I watched the second tower fall with about 30 other students, all croweded around the T.V.
They kept showing the planes hitting those buildings...over and over. Then the towers turning into dust. Most of the classes were cancelled that day.
Most....not all. My 12 p.m. British Lit. class with Dr. Montoya was still on. We didn't talk much about Shakespeare or Chaucer that day. we talked about freedom and terrorism. We let out of class early, and I drove back to my parents house as fast as I could.
And started watching the news.
That day....five years ago....it wasn't about politics and who could have lobbied for who. It was straight news. Confused and conflicting between CNN, Fox and MSNBC. It seemed that nobody quite had the grasp of what was real and what was false.
That was how it went in my world five years ago.
Since then...I moved to Wichita Falls, graduated from Midwestern State and got a career started. I've personally dealt with the effects of living in a post-9/11 world about 20 times. From airplane security checks, to taking off my shoes to being questioned after photographing buildings at night.
And so the world keeps turning and life keeps happening.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
