Wow. What a day that was. All of us went through the exact thing and yet no two of our experiences will be the same.

I was at work. A manager came by and said that one of the other managers had called him from home to say that a plane had hit the world trade center. He couldn't imagine such a thing unless maybe that other manager was "kidding." I remember saying "why would anybody joke about something like that? That's just not funny. So much of that day is a blur--and then again so much of it is crystal clear. I think when the second plane hit is when we began trying to find access to news. And of course the TV in the break room was broken, so we dug up a little 5" black and white TV radio combo one of the employees had left there. We also turned on all the radios we could find.

I remember saying something kind of stupid after that second plane like "there's something to this--we're under attack." I can't remember if it was before or after the plane hit the pentagon or even when the plane went down in Somerset PA that they began evacuating buildings in my city and sending workers home. I'm not one to panic at all, but that was VERY disconcerting.

And I remember seeing the smoke pouring out of those buildings on a grainy black and white TV and knowing it was a whole lot worse than what we could see then.

I was allowed to go home early that day--I left work somewhere between 2 and 3 pm. Of course when I got home the computer and TV were turned on and I couldn't believe what had happened. I remember watching news videos on my computer showing the planes hitting the twin towers. People running down a city street just ahead of a crumbling skyscraper, people jumping out of those windows 80 stories up and seeing them fall to certain peril. There was never a disaster movie created that could come anywhere close to approximating what people saw and felt and the sheer graphic horror of that day. In fact I know there is no real way of explaining that day to anybody who isn't old enough to remember living through it. My young nieces will never completely know how profoundly the world they now live in was altered on that single day--at least not on the emotional level that we know it.

And then the skies were deadly silent. Silent for days as our air industry was halted. I remember walking my dog one day about 4 days later and I saw a single jet stream across the sky and even that stood out. I realized that was a step back toward normalcy but also that 9/11 was a day that had changed the world forever.

And you know what--I cannot believe the raw emotion I still have 5 1/2 years later as I sit here and type this. What a senseless, idiotic thing for someone to dream up.