On September 11, 2001 I lived in New Jersey but worked in Manhattan. I was a video editor at a studio in the heart of Times Square on 47th street. I had been working there for three months. It was my first job out of college.
The first thing I remember about that day was training a new intern at work, showing him how to make coffee and where the cleaning supplies were kept. The radio was on in the kitchen and he had been listening to it before I arrived. “The radio just said a plane hit the World Trade Center.”
“Wow that’s crazy,” I said. Picturing like most people a small prop plane. Because anything else would be impossible. The image was almost funny. I continued training him. Windex the client tables every morning, fill the candy dishes, empty the garbage bins.
At some point, I don’t remember exactly who, someone mentioned a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. Again, I stupidly pictured another small Cessna or something. But even a skeptic like me got chills hearing this.
I listened to the radio in the kitchen. Not Cessnas, passenger jets. The radio announcer implied this was intentional and yeah, that seemed like a safe assumption at this point.
The intercom went off in the adjacent studio, “Shawn?”
“Yeah?”
“Your mother’s on line 2.”
I pick up. My mom is worried but trying to casually ask what’s going on there, am I OK? I smile, trying to play the savvy New Yorker, “Mom, I’m all the way up in Times Square, everything’s fine, business as usual here.” In fact, my bosses hadn’t even reacted yet, they were still preparing for the arrival of their clients at ten. I reassured my mom and we hung up. I wouldn’t be able to reach her again for many hours.
For some reason the facts of the day just seem like another crazy day in crazy New York. My boss needed a music search for his recording session so I headed to the music library and began searching through stock music.
Not too much later my boss runs in and turns on the TV in the music room. It didn’t even have an antenna so it barely picked up a signal. It was just audio and a picture that was mostly fuzz. Vaguely we could see the image of the towers burning. And then the towers just fell live on TV. I remember my boss just covering his mouth, saying “Oh my god the people in there.” The news reporter just kept saying, “This is incredulous! Absolutely incredulous!” over and over again, using that word, “incredulous.” It was frightening to hear a news reporter reacting emotionally.
We couldn’t see much on the fuzzy TV but just hearing the sounds and the reactions of the news anchors was even more horrifying. At this point I wander back to my studio alone and start working on my editing project but I couldn’t focus. All I could think about were all the people that just died. I remember thinking “Fuck it, I’m not working today,” and walked back to where my co-workers were.
We dished and gossiped and tried to comprehend it. At some point someone announced that the Pentagon had just been hit as well. This was the moment that everything felt crazy. I truly felt scared, like the impossible was now possible.
My bosses made the decision, everyone had to head home and get somewhere safe. It was a small company, there were only seven of us. I don’t remember talking as we crammed into the elevator, just that we were all scared and on edge. My boss told us to go uptown, “Don’t go downtown, whatever you do just find a place to go uptown.” We immediately headed downtown. My coworker Kevin and I lived in New Jersey and figured we might as well get home before things got even crazier.
Of course the subways were already closed as was Penn Station so Kevin and I turned around and headed up to 68th street where our other coworker Jared lived.
It’s important to note some realities of my life in 2001. I had no cell phone nor did Kevin. I had no digital camera. Phone booths were still common and on that day each one had a twenty person line.
There were so many people on the street. I remember seeing people at Penn Station sitting on the sidewalk crying. People shared what they knew on the street with other strangers. “Another plane hit the pentagon.” Yeah we heard that, “And another plane just hit somewhere else in New York, it hit a hospital!” At this point, anything seemed reasonable. It basically got to the point where I was actively wondering if a plane would fall out of the sky and just kill us right there on the sidewalk.
I was also fairly certain that my friend Garrett was dead. We had just met up the night before for coffee. He told me he was working at the World Trade Center. I had no idea which tower he was in or what, but I figured he was probably dead.
And for some reason, once I pictured this I stopped being afraid. I sort of assumed I would also die on that day. I’m not overstating this, I figured it was likely I would die. And once I realized that I stopped being afraid. If it was going to happen it was going to happen. Not much I could do about it.
We walked all the way up to 68th street but we weren’t exactly sure which building was his. We walk into one and talked to the door man. He was paranoid, “I can’t just tell you who lives in this building. After what happened today how can I trust you?” Realistically it made no sense that anyone would want to blow up a small apartment building on the west side but on that day, it seemed perfectly plausible. So we left.
I stood in line behind 10 people hoping to use a pay phone. I had to call my mom because I knew she must be freaking out. By the time it was my turn the phones just weren’t working. They were jammed up, couldn’t make a call.
We finally got up to Jared’ apartment and that’s where I spent most of the day. We finally were able to watch the news and watch the footage of the attack which repeated over and over.
The odd thing about that day is, despite being scared, I remember having a lot of fun. This feels insensitive but really we just made jokes all day. There was so much tension we needed to laugh. So for the next six hours or so we just made jokes and made each other laugh. That’s basically what we did all day at work anyway, so it made sense. And god did we need it. How else do you deal with the craziest most fucked up shit you’ve ever seen in your life? You laugh.
We went up on the roof to watch the smoke plume up from downtown while I smoked a cigarette. I don’t keep in close contact with either Kevin or Jared anymore but in some way I will always feel close to them because of this one day.
Around four or five in the evening they finally announced that ferries were taking people back to New Jersey, so Kevin and I headed down to the pier at 42nd street and stood in a very long line.
This is the part where I desperately wished I had a digital camera with me that day. The view from the ferry was spectacular. Basically the sun was setting in the west and to the east was Manhattan, glowing gold. A huge column of smoke extended all the way across the island. Actually I don’t really need a picture because I’ll never forget that view.
We then took double decker buses down Washington street in Hoboken, heading for the train station. We were on the upper deck and I remember having to duck out of the way of tree branches and stop lights because the street wasn’t designed for double decker buses.
At long last I got home and was able to tell my parents I was OK. And I found out that Garrett was alive, which was pretty cool. My friend Matt was also safe. I slowly got in touch with all of my other friends and assured them I was fine.
And then we all thought that the age of comedy was over forever, but that’s a whole different post.