September 11, 2001

 Sherman Oaks, CA
I recall my roommate had called me on the landline waking me up, I was agitated and probably hung over. "What?!" I bellowed. "Turn on the t.v."
"Dude, just tell me."
"I can't explain it, just turn on the t.v."
I vaguely remember seeing a high rise on fire. Which I thought that someone had started a fire. A few minutes passed "What the fuck is this?"
A plane had hit the building. I figured it was an accident. FWOOSH...WHAM! The second one hit. And the world changed. You know that shot in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" when Dreyfus sees the UFO. Yeah, that shit. The report on television said that another plane had taken off from Dulles Washington, United 93. It was like a gut punch...my girlfriend at the time was a flight attendant on a United jumper plane. I dialed her number. The lines were all down. Most likely all emergency bandwith was shut down. I panicked, paced and waited for more news. They kept playing the footage over and over again. It was surreal. I couldn't imagine that we witnessed the most catostrophic thing on camera and on every angle imaginable. It wasn't like the John Kennedy Zapruder film. This couldn't get more real. Then...
...the towers collapsed. I doubt I stopped saying "Hoooollllllly shiiiiiitttt..." before it all hit the ground.
I don't like to hear about the ones who jumped rather than burn. It's so...awful.
Then...17 years later. They rebuilt. Bigger and sleeker and like a massive finger to the terrorists. Though a ton had changed. We started hating Arabs. And...well, nothing seemed as important when you saw lives snuffed that fast.
I eventually reached my girlfriend who was fine. The plane the terrorist wanted weren't the small flight ones. They wanted all that fuel of the bi-costal ones. My relationship crashed and burned like the towers. It was gruesome and blurry for a lot of reasons in the early 2000's.
America is resilient and forgiving. Though the heroics of that day are really well documented, I still wonder how some aren't that hateful towards Muslims. Much credit to their maturity. For me...I stayed in a stupor for a long time. Seems my celebration of life meant I live life to the most self-destructive. Which, of course, now has changed dramatically. 9/11 was a turning point for a lot of lives obviously. As a blatant attack on American values. Which pre-Obama/Trump seemed to come together for a common enemy. But we're Americans, and things like this are easily mocked. Free speech and freedom from the people who truly hate our system. We've endured. And will continue despite the cowards who thought they could do anything, for something they obviously believed in. Kaepernick is one of them. But he's from the inside. But we tolerate him. Guess some people forgot what a handful of anti-American flag kneelers can do,