I woke up this morning at 4 am, I flipped on MSNBC and through the sleep in my eyes made out the crowds in front of the White House... mere blocks from where I live. I had fallen asleep 1 hour before the announcement was made that Osama Bin Laden was killed. For the world, it is a historic day, and for those of us here in the states, it's a time of renewed unity but it's also a time of reflection.
It's been 3 months now since I quit smoking cigarettes... and I will tell you what this day reminds me of... like most people, you've probably thought back to 9/11. Everyone remembers where they were that day. I was in a high rise brick building in Brooklyn waiting for my first college class of the day to begin. I was sitting at a table, wondering if I had time to grab a coffee before class started. Our professor was already 10 minutes late....
It was a gorgeous day and I had already looked out the windows in our room before I took my seat. We had a perfect view of the entire New York City skyline. I was half awake and I can remember my friend sitting by the window, and all of a sudden she said to me, "Get over here...you have to see this! I think a plane just hit a building..." and I said, "I don't want to see that... and how come I always miss the freak accidents... are you sure it wasn't a bird?" And she said, "Lindsay, just look at the smoke. Seriously... this smoke is crazy! A bird couldn't do that...."
So I came over... and I couldn't believe it. I thought... wow... how weird is that!? She was right... the smoke was incredible.. and we both sat at the window, looking at it pouring out of the first tower... waiting for our professor to arrive. "It's like a movie!" We both said in unison. 9 minutes later... I was still staring at the tower, and all of a sudden,... I could see this little thing that looked like a huge bird...coming towards the second tower... and then the second plane hit, and exploded and my immediate thought was....this isn't a f-cking accident at all. Suddenly as if my friend had woken up from a dream,...she grabbed my arm, and said, "My mother's in there! My mother works at the WTC! I have to call her." But like all of us had experienced that day... no calls were going through. Seconds later the professor next door comes in and says, "There's news we may be under a terrorist attack. Please stay here for further information."
Two minutes later, our professor arrived and gave us a 10 minute break to call loved ones. I got my dad who was working downtown at the time in Washington DC... he answered immediately and when he answered he said, "Lindsay, We're being evacuated... I have to go..." and before I could say anything else, his phone cut off... I thought, "What the hell is going on?!" So I called my mother... and she told me her building was being evacuated but she wasn't going to leave... and she didn't know what was going on. When I got back upstairs, My friend was in a panic. She couldn't reach her mother...and so she left (her mother was fine...she got out safely) but the whole thing was terrifying. I wasn't aware at the time the Pentagon had been hit, or of the plane in PA...
When we were finally dismissed, I walked briskly, hands trembling, and I remember lighting up a cigarette in the stairwell before I even got outside. Apparently I wasn't the only one with this idea... there were three of us, and I can remember this girl saying, "We have to be the only damn school in New York City that didn't cancel classes!" Then the guy who was smoking too said, "Yeah no kidding... friend goes to FIT and they definitely got out" To this day, I believe they were right. We were told to put our fears, frustrations, and sadness into our work. I can't tell you how well that went over...
When I got back to my dorm room CNN was on. I grabbed a beer, lit a cigarette and sat on a hard wooden chair and didn't move for 7 hours. It was the first I had heard of the Pentagon and PA and everything...but what I couldn't get out of my head was that I had watched it happen...not on TV.... but in real life... I ran out of cigarettes by 8pm and went for a walk to the bodega for more... you could hear a pin drop that night. The streets were empty and not only that, I could literally smell the smoke from the towers all the way in Brooklyn... by morning, the ashes had crossed the river...along with the papers from the towers... I can remember feeling the ash on my face... tasting it... I can remember seeing all the bits of white paper and not wanting any of it to touch me... That weekend I went home. I had never missed home so badly in all my life.
Anyway, I have probably never chain smoked like that since. I was in such a daze,... all I really remember after that was going to buy cigarettes and then by Thursday I was at Penn Station waiting for my train to take me home... That day that I left for home... was the first day that week I didn't see smoke...
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