Never Forget

I know I will never forget where I was and what I was doing when the tragedies of September 11th happened. It is hard to believe that it was 6 years ago already.

I was in college at Loyola University New Orleans, as was Christine, Erica and Seth. I remember watching the second plane fly into the towers, I remember seeing them fall, I remember hearing that the Army wing of the pentagon was hit and I remember running my fat butt up three flights of stairs to see if Christine was ok, and had her dad been at the Pentagon that day. He hadn't thank God. You may wonder why me running up 3 flights of stairs is such a big deal... see, Christine and I had had a blow out the previous year and we weren't on the best of terms at the time. . . So it was a big deal that I ran up 3 flights of stairs and pounded on her dorm room door.

Grace can come in moments of horror, like 9/11. 9/11 brought so many people to terms with reality and life, it made stupid fights with friends inconsequential especially when waiting to hear if your friend's dad had had a meeting that day at the pentagon. It mad us as a nation realize that we were not immune from terrorism, that we too could be subject to it. We as a nation always thought of terrorist attacks as happening in other countries be it the IRA bombing something in England or Northern Ireland, or the Palestinians bombing Tel Aviv. Terrorism was always "out there" or "over there" it was never here, it was never Home mainly because Americans have short attention spans and even shorter memories. We didn't remember Tim McVey, or the first bombing of the trade towers or the plots for the tunnels in NY, or the Kole, or Ruby Ridge... heck what about Wounded Knee when "we" were the terrorists.

So today, 9/11, let us remember the worst terrorist attack on the United States, but let us remember all the rest.

Let us raise our glasses of champaign, bottles of beer and diet coke, let us remember all the men, women and children who lost their lives on 9/11/01. We pray for them and their families.