9/11 is an odd thing for me. First of all, it was my son's 6th birthday. We intentionally tried to shut out what was happening (at least for the day of) in an attempt to keep his birthday "normal". For a long time he got very strange reactions when he would tell people his birthday was 9/11. He got reactions of, "That's not funny," or "That must be depressing," etc.
It doesn't happen much anymore, which is also interesting ... it's especially weird to read some of these replies with people talking about how they don't remember it - how it's something in the past.
I realize this is a mixed up jumble of memories, but, to be honest, the initial event didn't impact me that much. I live in the Midwest, and it all happened on the east coast. Further, it didn't surprise me. What surprised me was that everyone was caught off guard. I remember when President Clinton took a moderate course against bin Laden when he was causing problems in Sudan and let him slip away. The result was the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the Kenyan embassy in 1998, and the USS Cole in 2000. What did people think was going to happen?
But then it got weird. I had a dream I was on an airplane and bin Laden got on the plane. I did nothing. Just sat in my seat as they took over the plane. But another passenger attacked him, there was a scuffle. A gun came loose and slid across the floor toward me. I picked it up and pointed it at bin Laden. He smiled and walked toward me, saying, "You won't shoot." But I did. I killed him. The dream made me physically ill, and I felt horrible that I chose to shoot.
I started praying that bin Laden would be the next Saint Paul. Imagine what could have happened had he been converted.
In the meantime, I had been invited to speak at a conference in NYC in November of 2001. A lot of people cancelled because they were scared to fly and the conference was almost empty. Only 2 or 3 people came to each presentation. My flight was scheduled for 11 Nov 2001 ... exactly 2 months to the day. I didn't tell my wife about my dream - she would have freaked. I was pretty nervous about the flight - everyone seemed nervous, but maybe it was just my imagination. Still, nothing happened. It was a perfectly normal flight.
And then on 12 Nov 2001, Flight 587 out of JFK crashed. I had gone to the Empire State Building for a tour, and they forced us all out into the street because people didn't know if it was happening again. It turned out to be a mechanical problem, but I remember standing in the street looking up at the Empire State Building, and thinking, "This is stupid. How does this make me safe? If a plane hits that building, nothing is going to make me safe."
When I left for NYC people asked if I planned to visit ground zero. I said no. I didn't want to gawk - to go just for the sensationalism. After all, I didn't have a connection. Instead, I decided I would go to Battery Park, Wall Street, and the Statue of Liberty (as it turned out, the statue was closed for safety reasons). But I didn't know the city well. Since I didn't know the city, I decided to take a bus to those places. Suddenly the bus stopped and they made us get off. The line was closed because there was still so much damage around ground zero, and we had to walk the rest of the route down to Battery Park.
When I got off the bus, the stench was unbelievable - choking, horrid. The buildings were still smoking and all they had between us and the wreckage was a plywood barrier. The plywood was covered in messages written by people who had passed by. Letters were taped there, and the ground was covered with flowers and teddy bears. Tears came to my eyes. I paused for a moment, read a few of the messages, and then just put my head down and hurried on to Battery Park.
I made sure to check a map so I could get back without having to go by it a second time. I don't know what it was supposed to mean. It doesn't seem anything ever came of the dream, so I don't know what I would write.
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