I know that right now the internet is flooded with 9/11 stories, conspiracy theories, clips, and controversies but I still felt compelled to write about it anyway. I have never put down in writing what it was like that day for me. No, nothing amazing happened and I wasn’t directly affected by the loss of a loved one. Nope, for me 9/11 made me look like an asshole.
On September 10th 2001, I was sitting in my parents house in Lawrenceville, GA and arguing about politics with them. I loved to argue when I was in my early 20’s because I was right about everything and everyone around me was stupid. We were arguing about welfare and my folks had a differing belief than mine. I don’t quite remember what their stance was on it, but I know it was to the effect that too much money was going into the welfare system. Now, as then, I believe that the welfare system is and can be a positive tool to be used in helping out people who have fallen on hard times. There are some inherent problems with it like obvious abuse, staying on it for too long, and it only being enough to get a person by on the bare minimum and repressing them by not having enough available resources for welfare recipients to better themselves, etc, etc. I could go on about this but perhaps that is for another entry. Anyway, I made my argument and felt valid. My parents saw some of my points but then I added in a statement for fun that I would eat the very next morning. I said, “I don’t see why we spend so much government money on the military. It’s not like we have people attacking us or anything. It’s a colossal waste of money that we should really be scaling back on.” I said this because it was only a few days before that I heard that we were spending something like $100 million per tank or something and I thought how ridiculous it was. My parents told me that it was necessary even though at times we may go a little overboard on it, but I was adamant in my rightness. I spouted off about how we never get in fights of our own and that we are always running to get in someone else’s fight. (Which is still kind of true) But I didn’t think that we needed anything above the bare minimum.
The debate ended as it always did back then with my parents saying, “Where did we go so wrong with that boy?” and me feeling good about being right. I really didn’t think about it anymore that night because we got into those little debates all the time. I had just started getting interested in politics and still had the crazy notion that different politicians and political parties could and would make a difference. I know now that it is all just one giant political system based upon money. I can really equate our political system to an auction of interests. Every stance and belief is based upon who is willing to pay top dollar for a party member to stand behind it. If GLAAD offered Rick Perry a $10 million dollar donation for endorsement tomorrow, don’t think he wouldn’t take it. He would line up in the nearest gay pride parade he could find and would finally unlock Michelle Bachmann’s husband out of the closet. Same with democrats, if an abortion abolitionist offered up a hefty check to either Clinton, they would quickly change their stance and start protesting outside of the nearest abortion clinic. Anyway back to my 9/11 story. I thought and still think that Bush was a moronic little puppet but I didn’t exactly know why at the time (it was probably because he previously almost ruined the Texas Rangers. Who knows? I was 20.)
I got up the next morning for work, ate my Dunkin’ Donuts, and started my 1 ½ hour commute to RMA Atlanta. The drive should technically have been about 20-30 minutes at best but Atlanta, at the time, had one of the nation’s worst traffic problems. I turned on the radio to 99x as I always did because I didn’t own an iPod and my CD player had some sort of substance shoved into it. It was on one of those morning radio shows were they try to make everything funny and usually go so over the top that it winds up being stupid. They always kept a TV on onset and had it tuned to CNN so they could talk about anything up the minute and make fun of it or discuss it. Well, apparently at first these DJs didn’t see any actual footage and only heard of a plane running into one of the Twin Towers because I remember Jimmy (don’t remember the last name) making a joke saying that he hoped the tail end wasn’t sticking out too far of the building so that we couldn’t see what airline it was. He joked about how bad the publicity would be when it was found out that some pilot got drunk for American Airlines and ran into a giant building. Everyone joined in laughter and even I did, but then they got deadly silent followed by sounds of gasps and “Oh my God!”s. I wasn’t very far along in my commute and was in the middle of the interstate so it wasn’t like I could pull over and watch the news somewhere. So I was like, “What is going on? What’s the big deal?” The details started flooding in and traffic came to an absolute halt, zero movement. All I could do was listen to these jackasses on 99x suddenly shed their “funny” personas and start to act concerned. It was surreal looking around to the thousands of other cars surrounding me and seeing the same “WTF” face on everyone. I was still a dinosaur and didn’t have a cell phone yet, but I saw everyone dialing away furiously and frantically speaking to whomever on the other end of the line. As I was crawling along through the interstate, I heard another “Oh Shit” moment when the on-air guys announced in horror that a second plane had hit. It was at that point when I first heard the words “terrorist attack”. The same moron that had made the drunken pilot joke suggested this, and immediately to show how my brain worked I thought, “Dammit, they were right!!” I was pissed because I was wrong and my point had been shat upon. I got over it and made my way to work in about 2 hours instead of the regular 25 mile 90 minute drive.
I arrived at work, and was oddly enough still not that affected. I thought it was awful and it sucked but I really couldn’t grasp it until I saw actual video proof. All the bosses had CNN on, with the footage on loop. I stood there in awe watching the burning buildings and the jumping people. I worked in a debt collection center at the time and we were contracted through Nextel. Our job was to call people with a past due bill, ask for the money, and if they didn’t come up with it, we would shut their phones off. Now imagine trying to prepare to do that on this day. Many customers were located in New York and our bosses expected us to make these calls as usual. I protested after doing my first call. I called a woman in New Jersey who had a $100 or so past due bill and gave my whole spill.
Me: Hi, this is Dustin Elliott calling with Nextel. Can I speak with _____?
Lady: Are you f*ckin’ kidding me? Do you see the news? You really gonna call me right now and the world is gonna end?
Me: Yep, pretty much. I know. I feel like an ass, don’t worry about it.
My boss standing behind me: No, no, no you better be asking for that balance!!
Me: Ma’am, I need to ask you …. (click)
I couldn’t do it. I hung up on her. I turned around and told my boss that it wasn’t right, we couldn’t be calling these people. I logged out of my computer and noticed that several others were as well. All the bosses were telling us to get back on the phones but they could see that their effort was futile. People were emotional and crying to customers, others were exchanging information about what was going on with customers, and nothing was getting done. I raised my eyebrows as if to say, “See? I told you” to my boss. They all gathered us around and said they would call Nextel headquarters and find out what to do. Soon enough, they announced that they were able to determine that it was one of the douchiest moves in history if we continued to call customers and offered to let us go home. I never passed the opportunity to go home early and since I had an 11 day old son at home, I took off.
Leaving Atlanta that morning was like trying to shove a watermelon into a fly’s rectum. I spent the next 3 hours trying to make my way back home. I was listening to every available radio station and gathering information. It was miserable, I smoked a whole pack of Newport’s on the way and heard the same news over and over. I arrived home so I could finally get to sit down and watch all the horror.
As I was watching, I really realized that we are a nation of voyeurs and rubberneckers. We constantly watched the same footage over and over. We were glued and hooked to the mayhem. My lady friend actually made a good point after a few minutes, she said, “Why are we still watching this? We have seen it now and nothing is going to change. Find a channel that has Spongebob or something, I’m sick of this.” She was right and wrong. Nothing was going to change but after you see something like that on TV you are afraid to walk away because you don’t know what might happen next. Plus I was wanting to see if all the rumors would be debunked throughout the day. At work, rumors had been flying about attacks all over the place and that Olympic Park was being burnt to the ground and that bombs were being set off in every federal building. Of course, none of that actually happened but that’s rumors for you. So I sat up until about 2 a.m. watching the news and feel asleep with dreams of burning buildings. The next day I got the call from my dad saying, “What was it you were saying about our national security the other day?” Yeah, I was wrong.
Many stories were pretty much similar all across the country I’m sure. I am not special but I just remembered a few of the bullet points of that day that just seem odd to me and thought I would write it down finally before I forget. A lot has changed in those 10 years, we got really patriotic for about 6-8 months, no one questioned anything, we went to war with Iraq, we “won” the war, we stayed over there and still are, we grew up, and came full circle back to being cynical about everything again. I don’t think I ever lost my cynicism during the whole thing. I thought it was stupid from the beginning to go to Iraq since the terrorists were supposed to be in Afghanistan. I was never really a conspiracy theorist about the whole 9/11 thing although there are a few odd things that happened and some shifty situations went on. I do continue to at least listen to alternative ideas and am open to other suggestions, but I won’t be a fanatic about it. I thought country music fans were morons for banning the Dixie Chicks. It was the most moronic stance I have ever seen a community take. I don’t care how patriotic Toby Keith is, I think he is a redneck jackass who is just capitalizing off of other’s pain. So, see I kept up my cynicism.
I do support our troops and all that they have done, I just think that perhaps the people behind the curtains don't know what the hell they are doing. Just wanted to make that clear.
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