Tuesday morning

I didn't sleep well last night. It was much too hot in my dorm and we don't have air conditioning. Pretty typical for Georgia summers, I guess. My bed is uncomfortable and the sun has already brightened up the room enough to render sleep impossible. From across the room, I can see I only have a few minutes before my alarm clock goes off, so I begrudgingly jump down from my bunk, turn it off and start gathering the various items in my shower basket for the trip down the hall.

As I enter the bathroom on the third floor of Myers Hall, I pass my friend Adam as he leaves.

"How's it going?" I ask, as I often do, expecting a normal, nonchalant answer as he continued past me. Instead, he stopped.

"Did you hear?" he asked with an unusual seriousness.

"Hear what?" I ask back, genuinely uninformed.

"Someone bombed New York and Washington."

"What do you mean bombed?" I ask. My firsts thoughts are of military planes of a hostile nation flying over Manhattan and Washington and dropping actual ordinance on strategic targets. Who could possibly be doing that? Iraq? Iran? There's no way they could logistically accomplish that. We would've seen them coming. The only ones close enough are Mexico and Canada, and they're certainly not invading us. The more I think, the more I realize that the prospect of America being under attack by a sovereign nation is, at best, wildly unlikely.

"Who was it? Do we know?"

"Well, they think it was...guess who..."

"Bin Laden or whatever his name his?"

Adam nods.

"How many people are dead?"

"I dunno. Probably thousands."

"That's insane."

"Yeah. Yeah it is. Well listen, I gotta go, but I'll see you."

"Yeah man, see you."

After he left, I was alone in the bathroom. It was eerily quiet. I was feeling an unusual mix of emotions, at least by my standards. I was a little confused, a little angry, and honestly a little scared. Most of all, I had simply no idea what to do. I was at a loss for all things. Words, thoughts, comprehension.

So, I did what I usually do when I'm in a situation beyond my comprehension or control. I prayed. I don't pray nearly as habitually as I probably should, or maybe would like, but it seemed like an appropriate time to do so. I prayed that whatever was happening would not be the prelude to a massive global conflict, though somehow I knew then that it was.

I didn't personally know anyone in either New York or D.C. (or, more accurately, Arlington, Virginia -- the site of the Pentagon) so I wasn't worried about the immediate safety of a loved one. The closest thing I had was my girlfriend in College Park, Maryland. So my first semi-coherent thought was to call her and make sure she was alright. I wasn't particularly worried -- that is, until I tried to make a call only to find that the phone lines were not working. I was eventually able to contact her via the internet, and she was, as I hoped, perfectly fine -- though a little shaken, she said.

Having verified that my own microcosm of life was as intact as possible, I decided I would at least try to fulfill my scholastic responsibilities and attend my statistics class.

I sat down in the back of the class, and my professor began the class by saying it would be permissible for people to leave their cell phones on, particularly if they were waiting to hear from someone, making the remark that her daughter was stranded in Paris due to the shutdown of air traffic.

Being unable to concentrate on anything, much less standard deviations and the like, I returned to the Myers Hall lobby where a group of students were gathered around one of the big screen televisions. They were staring at the screen in disbelief. No one was saying a word. I joined them and we sat in silence, save for my occasional -- and inappropriate -- attempts to break the silence.

We uniformly gasped as the towers collapsed. There were no words to express the emotion, but we all felt it and knew it was mutual.

I spent the rest of the day in a haze, with the occasional conversation that consisted of little more than “Can you believe it? Me either.”

Later that evening, in an impromptu show of unity, the members of Congress gathered on the steps of the Capitol building to make a statement which turned into a singing of “God Bless America.” I cried.

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I’ve commented many times before on the feeling after 9/11, but it certainly bears repeating. Despite the horrific events that occurred that day, there was a certain purity that came from it. On that day and the days immediately following, there was a unity and camaraderie in America and even around the world that I had never seen before nor in the five years since.

It’s simply unfathomable to me that we’re five years removed from that day. My perception of time from that day is absolutely bizarre. Parts of it seem as vivid as yesterday while others seem to be viewed through the fog of a previous life.

This anniversary brings to mind several adages I’ve heard over the years. First, “forgive and forget.” We’re always told that decent people are supposed to forgive and forget. I can’t. Not about this. I will never forget what happened that day for the rest of my life. And as far as forgiveness, I don’t see that happening either. Forgiveness implies that the guilty have asked forgiveness. That, to my knowledge, has no happened. In fact, it would seem that the exact opposite has occurred. Not only are they not sorry, but their goal is to do inflict even worse disasters upon us. What part of that warrants forgiveness?

I have much more to say on this subject, but I fear that it will be too tainted by politics to be appropriate for today. So, I will commence with that at another time. In the meantime, I ask that if you feel so compelled to comment on this post that you refrain from making political statements. At least give me the illusion that we’re unified enough to respect this anniversary without politicizing it. Thank you.