September 11 terrorist attacks, 2001, by Fritz Swanson

From MemoryArchive

Who: Fritz Swanson
What: September 11 attacks
When: Sept. 11, 2001
Where: Ann Arbor, Michigan

I teach at the University of Michigan, and my days at work are Monday, Wednesday and Friday. My first class is at 9 am. So, my alarm is always set to 7:30am every morning so that I can get used to the fall routine of getting up early. It's a radio alarm which I have set to NPR and I wake up every morning to Morning Edition and listen to what is happening. It's a GE alarm clock, and I don't know about other clocks because this one is old an dthe only alarm clock I have ever had, and the reason I say all of this is to say that it only plays the radio for one hour. I guess that is so that it will turn off after you have left. GE figures you will wake up when the radio comes on, and before the hour is over you will be out the door. GE market research must have determined that most people set their alarm to, like, forty-five minutes before they have to leave or something.

Anyway, what this means is that on Tuesday the alarm turned the radio on at 7:30am. But I didn't have anything to teach, and my girlfriend doesn't need to be to work until eleven, so we just rested in bed listening to NPR. Now, right now, I don't know what was on. I don't remember anything about the program. I just remember being in bed with my girlfriend, waking up slowly to the sound of Todd Mundt and the other NPR people and just sort of relishing how relaxing the day seemed already. I had almost no grading to do and nothing scheduled at all. So I just laid in bed for an entire hour until the radio turned itself off. The radio figured I should be at work by now and I didn't feel like arguing.

So I got up. It was 8:30 am and I got. Normally when I get up I go to watch the weather channel, but because I had listened to so much radio, all of it so wonderfully calming, and because I had no where to be that day, I didn't turn on the TV. I just picked up the new issue of WIRED magazine and started to read an article about Programmable Matter. There was stuff about quantum wells and semiconductors and all kinds of sci-fi possibilities for matter that could change its actual elemental make up. Gold to lead. Alchemy. Transmutation.

And then my friend David Nelson called. Sara answered the phone and she said, quickly, "Dave says that the internet is down and that we need to turn on the TV."

So I did. And there was a shot on CNN of two smokestacks, one of them smoking and the other not. And I had no clue what I was looking at. It was a moment where the perspective was all shot and it was unclear how big anything was supposed to be. Out of the right side of the frame came an airplane, and it seemed like it must have been a model, because of its apparent size as related to the smokestacks. And then the plane hit the second smokestack, which, at that moment, became the WTC. I could see that it was a pair of buildings and the second one was detonating, and then I could hear what Aaron Brown was reporting.

And at first I laughed. And I thought, this is like some movie. And now, days later, I realize what I meant in my mind when I thought, This is like a movie.

What I meant, what I think every one means when they think, this is like a movie is this: They mean that this is NOTHING like a movie because it is happening.

And everything was sort of out of whack.