A lot can change in five years. F’rinstance, five years ago, TPRS was all of eight days old. Before the planes went down that morning, I wrote about Swedish hockey, the weather, and HTML. It was just another Tuesday morning- warm, sunny…a day thoroughly unremarkable and undistinguishable from any other early autumn workday.
I was a contract technical writer at Enron, and I was in my office in downtown Houston early that morning. If memory serves, I got in about 6.15am. My company’s contract was running out, and my job at that time was more than anything else to look busy. There was a television monitor outside my office door, so I would watch the morning news, have my breakfast, surf the Internet, and work on TPRS, which at that time was little more than a developing idea with no them or direction (some would argue that it still is).
When the first plane hit the World Trade Center, the television outside my office was tuned to CNN, and no one really thought much about what had happened. We were told initially that a small plane had crashed into a WTC tower, which, while tragic, didn’t seem to begin to rise to the level of what we were about to experience. When the second plane hit, all activity on my floor came to a halt almost immediately. Suddenly, this was no longer an ordindary Tuesday morning in September.
By about 10.30am, we were told to evacuate the building. Being that I worked in one of the tallest buildings in downtown Houston, it seemed a reasonable precaution. For all anyone knew, we were next. The evacuation, while orderly, was one of the most surreal events I’ve experienced. The odd, uncomfortable silence was oppressive as everyone left at the same time…and yet no one knew what to think.
Traffic in Houston is hardly unusual, but I don’t imagine that there has ever been a traffic jame quite like the one I found myself in. Heading south on I-45, it seemed as if every car in the city was heading the same direction at the same time. The northbound lanes were virtually empty, but the southbound lanes reminded me of a line from an old Police song: Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes…and going nowhere fast.
Making a call on my cell phone was tricky, since everyone else was trying to reach loved ones just as I was. After a few minutes, though, I was able to reach Susan. Once I was able to make sure she was OK and account for Adam and Eric, I was faced with a dilemma. It was 10.30 in the morning; what was I going to do with myself for the rest of the day? Somehow I knew that I would be glued to the news all day long, but I wasn’t ready to be at home just yet. I still don’t know how or why I made this decision, but I went to a gym in Pasadena and worked out for two hours. I remember being on a StairMaster and watching footage of the towers collapsing. I guess I just didn’t know what to do with myself; burning off nervous energy seemed to make sense at the time.
All of us have our own 9.11 story, and I imagine that the memory of that day is something that will stay with us throughout the course of our lives. I find it difficult to believe that it’s been five years. It feels like another lifetime ago…and in a sense, I suppose it was.
