I think we need more of the 50 questions, but I'm gonna skip the boring ones.
Where were you on September 11, 2001?
I was working at my present bookstore job. We were doing a remerch, so I was in the business department before store opening, shifting books. A staff member's mom called her son at the store to tell him what she'd just seen on the news. It sounded like a one-off accident at first (a small plane) so we were surprised, but went on working until the news about the second plane came in. Our store is next to a sports bar, so we all got there before the rest of the business lunch crowd, to see what was happening on TV. The bar was totally packed by the time we left. Veddy sad. When I went to bed that night, I kept thinking about people still trapped alive in the rubble.
I was also doing a remerch when Katrina hit, only this time I was doing overnights. Fernando and I had watched a show a year or two before about how if a big enough hurricane ever hit New Orleans, its bowl shape would fill with water and it would be a horrendous disaster. So we both took the warnings really seriously, and were watching CNN constantly. When I went to work Monday night it seemed the worst was over, and when I got home again at 7 AM Fernando told me about the overtoppling of the levees.
I don't remember about Haiti, though. I probably just read about it as I did the daily net-surf. Surfing the Net isn't very memorable, except when the Tsunami hit cause I remember it being early New Years, surfing the net after partying with my peeps.
I wonder what other "where were yous" I have. I was dusting an old person's livingroom during the Oslo accords hand-shaking-on-the-lawn. I think I was in my teenaged bedroom when the shuttle blew up. In my mother's livingroom when I heard about Israel invading Lebanon. What else am I missing?
1 comment:
I was in an undergraduate political theory course with my favorite professor of all time. Jeffrey Obler, now deceased, and an excellent scholar who never even advanced to full professor in old age because he was so much more of a teacher than a researcher.
Other people had seen it on the TV on their way out the door, this being a 10 am class. However, I didn't quite comprehend what anyone said, or remotely understand its significance when someone told me, "Two planes just crashed through the Twin Towers."
With Katrina... I mean, I don't know where I was when it hit? No one was expecting anything big at the time, and it didn't get serious until the levees broke...well after the hurricane passed through. That kind of unfolded over a few days, and I was living in DC and reading the stories about it just like everyone else. I've never been to what we think of as the Deep South.
I think I found out about Haiti and the Tsunami in the morning newspapers...
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