I Will Never Forget

There are certain events in life that are so monumental that you will forever remember where you were and what you were doing at the time they occurred.

For example, I remember exactly where I was when Elvis died. Not because I was particularly enamored of him, but because a friend of my Mother's was, and she made such a spectacle of herself over the news - wailing and throwing herself to the ground in grief - that it stuck in my head.

That's how it is with the events of September 11, 2001 . I remember exactly where I was when I first heard about it.

I was in my car going to work. I had just come up to the turn off from the highway and was waiting for my light to turn. I could see that other people around me were listening to the same radio station because they all had the same facial expression that I had. When the light turned we all just sat there, staring at the radio in disbelief. No one went, and no one honked their horn either.

As with most people I've spoken to about it, at first I didn't know if it was for real or not. Then, once it sunk in that it really did happen, I actually felt guilty for having slept thru it. Alaska has a 4-hour time difference with New York, so it was about 4:00 in the morning when the event occurred. I felt that I should have known; I should have felt it somehow, and woken up. That many people dying at once should have sent a shock-wave thru the world and woken everybody up - but it didn't and I slept on, blithely unaware.

Not much work got done that day, as you might expect. My boss had the live news videos playing on his computer, and we all crowded into his cubicle to watch. I'd run back to my computer occasionally to check on the local newspaper's website and read outloud any updates.

One of the comments made by the local newspaper was that people should think about donating blood. Undoubtadly the Blood Bank would need a lot in order to take care of all the survivors they were expecting. No one could even begin to comprehend that there might not be any.

Since that was about the only thing I could do, I went after work to our local branch of the blood bank intending to give my pint. I was astonished to see that hundreds of people had that same idea - the line actually wrapped all the way around the outside of the building!

I give blood quite regularly, but have never seen anything like that before or since. The nurses and staff at the blood bank were completely overwhelmed. I decided that rather than donate blood, I could help out much more by helping to take names down and make appointments, thereby freeing up actual staff/nurses to deal with more critical tasks.

I stood there at the door for a good 2-3 hours, writing down names and assigning time-slots for people to come back and give. Unfortunately for me, my back injury was still quite recent and I had not fully healed yet. I was in excruciating pain standing there that long, and was completely unable to move for fear that I'd start crying. The only thing that kept me going was the line that just never seemed to get any shorter.

I remember I dropped my pencil once. I just stood there looking at it, knowing there was no way I could reach down to get it -my back just would not allow that movement at all (I still can barely make that particular movement, in fact). Finally somebody in line took pity on me and retrieved it for me.

I'd love to hear other people's stories: where were you when 9/11 happened?