Five years later

Of course, I can't let today go by without discussing the goings-on of five years ago.

I was living in New Jersey at the time. It was close to 8:45am, and I had just woken up. It was an absolutely perfect September day: not a cloud in the sky, a warm breeze, and a very comfortable mid-70s. Seriously, you couldn't ask for better weather.

A little over a month before I quit my job, which was causing too much stress for me to live healthily, and I had really felt the impact of the market -- while I never before had trouble scoring an interview and a job really quickly with my experience, at this time I just couldn't get someone to even open an envelope containing my résumé. I booted up my computer and was getting ready to dial into the 'net to search online for a job.

My mother-in-law called me from the doctor's office where she was working. She asked me to turn on the TV because she and her coworkers had heard something about how a plane hit the World Trade Center. Then she heard that two planes hit, one for each tower.

I turned on the TV, expecting to see a part of maybe a small propeller plane sticking out of the building with a puff of white smoke. Instead, I saw a massive fireball with black smoke endlessly billowing into the sky. As an uncontrolled reflex, I said something I never said to an elder before, nor have I said since: "HOLY SHIT!"

The latest my mother-in-law heard wasn't quite accurate; at that point, only one tower had been hit. It was a considerable time after that when I saw on TV an explosion in the other tower. From where the camera was, it looked like a bomb had gone off in the second tower, but the news crew repeatedly replayed the tape to see if they could notice anything, and they did: a small dot zoomed toward the tower, and on impact, caused the explosion. Of course, that small dot turned out to be another airliner.

I remember hearing of a plane crash in Pennsylvania...and a plane crashing into the Pentagon. All I could think was, "What next? What's happening to this country?!"

I had to get away from the TV. We lived two blocks away from the beach, so I decided to take a walk that way. As I walked down the block, I could hear TV and radio reports coming from each house. When i got to the beach, I looked up at the beautiful blue sky and saw a brown streak across the sky, a streak that gradually got darker toward the north.

My wife came home early from work, unsurprisingly. Friends from back in Illinois called to make sure we were okay. I tried to call my parents, but I couldn't get a connection. I tried on my cell phone and got through and talked to my dad, who told me he was relieved that I called because he and my mother were worried sick about us, as they knew that for various reasons we'd have to take occasional trips into New York.

And I must speak out about something...the Concert for New York, and more specifically, Paul McCartney's song, "Freedom." Definitely not the best thing he's ever written (and not the worst, either -- ever hear "Mrs. Vanderbilt"?), but you know what? It's not too bad. One thing to keep in mind is that he wanted to write a song that's simple and easy to sing along to, which it is on both counts. And I admit that toward the end of the concert when Paul said they were going to perform it again, I did kind of groan, but it's a simple song with a simple message. And you know what? It went over very well in concert -- then again, that concert that I saw was at Madison Square Garden...but both Beatlefests I attended in 2002 -- in Jersey and outside of Chicago -- had Battle of the Bands acts who performed that song, and they both got a really good applause, so obviously some people like it.

And I just love how there are a few people -- including Martin Lewis -- who claim that Macca was telling an untruth when he said he could see the World Trade Center on fire from the runway at JFK Airport. Let me get this straight...two of the world's tallest buildings have a very frightening amount of black smoke pouring into the sky and you can't see that?? (Plus, I've talked to several other people who have said that they were able to see the World Trade Center from the runway at JFK -- it just depends on which runway you're on and where you were on the runway.)

I don't know how much I can say that everybody else hasn't been feeling, but I can say this much:

• My wife and I successfully turned to The Beatles for comfort.


• Nearly three thousand lives were lost that day, but I prefer to look at it this way: tens of thousands of lives were saved.


• When I woke up the next morning, I felt much better -- because I realized that I was still alive. Truly, September 11, 2001 was the one time in my life when I legitimately feared for my life.