Assignment 3: When I Made 9/11 About Me and I Can’t Forgive Myself

My ego was irreparably harmed when I was working as a college administrator and realized that incoming students were born after I graduated from high school. They had no memory of the Challenger explosion, they didn’t really know what Columbine was, just that they had to have active shooter drills and so nothing shocked them, really. They didn’t live through the time when Prince’s name was a symbol (and also who is this “Prince” you speak of?) and now Nirvana was just a band on a t-shirt they could buy at Hot Topic for $40. God, if ever there was a slap in the face to Generation X, it was seeing the 90s be romanticized in the form of a comeback of Empire Records.

But what blew my mind the most was that many of them really didn’t know what happened on September 11, 2001. I think they understood it in theory, but not so much why it was a big deal. Everyone my age and older has their 9/11 story that we all seem to hold dear. It’s a touchstone – one moment we all remember and can talk about; a shared experience that was also unique to every single person.

September 11, 2011, was four days before my wedding. At the time, I wasn’t far removed from college and had a terrible first-job-out-of-college position at an industrial laundry. I’d sit at my desk every morning and wipe the mouse poop from my keyboard and get ready to start calling restaurants and car lots to find out how satisfied they were with the cleanliness of their uniforms and timeliness of their shop rag delivery. It was easy and I was bored most of the time. I checked all of the websites in all of the land every afternoon; there were only about 20 back then. I joined a Wes Anderson appreciation group called The Yankee Racers and had hours to pontificate on soundtrack choices and character traits and, like, really important stuff.

But that September morning, I was checking the news like I always did after I predictably rolled in to work 10 minutes late. My fellow middle-agers know that the internet was slooooooow back then. Like, old people backing out of parking spaces slow. After not quite an hour, I betrayed my lack of working by announcing to my co-workers what I had just seen online – that a plane just hit the World Trade Center in New York. They just kind of shrugged and went about their days. But I was about to get married, dammit. And some of my wedding guests were in New York. Would this affect their ability to attend? Yes, I heard myself and NO, I’m not proud of it.

About five minutes later, the second plane hit the second tower and I KNEW this was an actual thing. I ran out of my office, into the “bullpen” of the company and announced that we were probably being attacked. My co-workers considered me a drama queen, but to appease me they turned on the ancient tube television – the kind that crackled and took forever for the picture to show up. For some reason, they were still unimpressed. One of the secretaries who wore 90s hair and 90s work heels whipped one of her shoes off and killed a mouse that was running under her desk. And so thanks, lady, for making sure those memories are forever linked in my mind.

CNN and MSNBC had very early versions of websites up and running but, as I said, slow internet. Plus, the whole world was trying to access those sites at the time. Refresh, refresh, refresh. It took whole minutes to load the home pages. We in the outside world were waiting without the faintest of knowledge of what was really going on. I sat in the bullpen and watched the screen until finally my co-workers joined me. We saw the towers fall and went back to work, frightened of a potential impending war, but not comprehending what we saw. No way was I getting any work done that day.

Task one was to call my mother. Were we still going to have a wedding? This was obviously a national disaster, but was it really? Like, was it really really? It’s clear now that I had no concept of what just happened. But, like, my gown and the bridesmaids dresses were being steamed and readied. The photographer hadn’t changed her plans. On one hand, I was trying to deal with the fact that something horrible had happened far away, but I was also deciding how selfish I was going to be in this moment. This was supposed to be my day. So help me god, if terrorists, ruin my day, I will not be gracious about it. We’d ordered an entire barbecue dinner and a shitty DJ and I was not going down without a fight.

Mother was being practical, as she is wont to do. Can we get a deposit back from the venue? What about the flowers? If we still have a wedding, will there be a bouquet and boutonnieres? Will family still come and, if airports are being shut down, how? This was her big moment, too.

The next day, I got a telephone call from many of my friends who lived in New York, who’d all gathered in one apartment to talk to me. In my manic state, I didn’t realize how worried I’d been for them, or how terrified they must be, or why I hadn’t been able to get them on the phone. And when they finally got a line out of the city, they called me. We cried and talked, but knew the line might go dead at any minute. Their main messages were: we love you and please go get married. They wanted to know that, in the midst of something horrible, something good was also happening. And, just like that, I was shameless in my insistence that the show must go on. I had official permission from real-life New Yorkers that my wedding was important. It wasn’t just important to me, but it was important TO THE WHOLE WORLD. I was a literal patriot.

And so, four days after 9/11, I married my husband. And every year, I remember my anniversary by counting back the years since September 11, 2001. Ultimately, I’m not 100% proud of my first instincts. I wasn’t a “bridezilla,” but I was still a Southern woman who had been planning a wedding for at least six months. It was ingrained in me to fight for this moment, no matter the cost. These are the most fucked-up of priorities and I was aware of it the entire time. That’s irrefutable. But you learn what you learn. In retrospect, I learned that – national tragedy or not – I was just as married that day as I would have been if I’d gotten the flowers I ordered (which I did NOT). And we were on the front page of the newspaper as an inspiration for all to see. My mom liked that part, maybe the best.