This Week In Retro: 9/11/01 (Patreon)

September 11, 2001

by Diamond Feit

It was a Tuesday. An extremely ordinary Tuesday.

I was driving to work at the post office in Armonk, New York, just as I did every day for the previous four years. It was a lousy job that I did solely for the paycheck, the kind of job where you count the minutes until the end of your shift comes. To offset the dreariness of my workplace, I had Howard Stern on the radio during my commute, determined to amuse myself right up until I had to enter the building and waste the next nine hours of my life.

Just as I pulled into my usual parking space, Howard interrupted his story about being intimate with Pamela Anderson to report that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. I got out of the car without giving his words a second thought. New York is a big city full of buildings that loom so large, aviation accidents are common. As I walked down the hill to the delivery dock, I figured this would prove to be an unfortunate accident, but my thoughts were already elsewhere by the time I pushed open the double-doors to the office.

When I saw my coworkers all huddled around a radio in a corner, I knew something terrible had happened. They told me what Howard hadn't known, that the plane which hit one of the Twin Towers was a full-size commercial aircraft, not a wayward private jet. Half of the tower was aflame with no possible means to extinguish the blaze from street level. Recovery from a crash of this magnitude would take months, perhaps years. My thoughts turned to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing which had occurred in the parking garage, and I worried that the casualties from that incident would soon be eclipsed.

Within minutes, we heard the news that a second plane had collided with the second tower, and I can remember slumping onto a stool as the reality of the situation hit me. These were not accidents. New York City was under attack. Nothing would be the same from this day forward.

If you lived in America on that day, I'm certain you remember the immediate shutdown of all air traffic that morning. What you might not know is that the United States Postal Service relies on cargo space in commercial airlines to circulate mail around the globe. So as we learned of the ongoing disaster, our office was also inundated with questions from the public and directives from the regional management. We stopped accepting international packages at first, then all packages weighing over one pound, but then the word came down to decline all mail pickup and to close the doors.

Once the news of the collision with the Pentagon hit, the scale and scope of the attacks proved to exceed all our expectations, and it became anyone's guess as to where or when the next explosion might occur. The Postal Service was no longer an arm of the U.S. government, but our quasi-federal status made us a visible, local symbol of the nation. I wasn't frightened of an airplane landing on a small building in Westchester, but I was relieved when the Postmaster told us all to go home for the day.

My drive home was surreal. I remember thinking that I had to do something to help people, but knew that all routes into New York City were closed. I thought donating blood might be an alternative, so I steered my car towards the nearest blood bank, only to find a line of people that stretched around the block. People say New Yorkers are rude and mind their own business above all else, but I have found that when things go bad, there's always someone willing to help.

Convinced my measly pint of fluid would not be missed, I went home and called my father in Manhattan to check on him. He told me he could feel the heat of the explosion through the windows of his Wall Street office, but assured me he had already returned to his midtown home. I tried to call a friend attending college in Chelsea, but he didn't answer. I later learned he had slept through the entire disaster and only found out what happened when his afternoon classes were cancelled.

The weeks and months that followed September 11, 2001 were amongst the most difficult times of my life. The initial sorrow over thousands killed became a rage against the perceived perpetrators, but of course all the people responsible for the attacks died in the process. My anger could not be quelled with revenge for there was no one left to take the blame. Instead, my emotions ran wild. I felt helpless, I felt betrayed, and more than anything else, I felt scared.

In hindsight I am grateful that social media did not exist in 2001 (and that I did not start blogging until 2004), for I remember believing and saying terrible things in the wake of September 11. My anger convinced me that the terrorists wielded their baseless hate for America and Israel as a weapon against innocent civilians, leaving us no choice but to respond to their aggression with devastating military force against their home countries. With no guilty left to punish, blind reprisal would have to suffice.

The racist fury I experienced that fall bubbled to the surface around the country, along with a misguided sense of patriotism. Americans who had already believed they lived in the greatest country in the world saw September 11 as vindicating their position. The refrain at the time was that the terrorists attacked us because they couldn't have what we had, and thus it was essential that we asserted our American values whenever possible else we let "the terrorists win."

As a child of the Cold War, I grew up immersed in pro-USA entertainment, as all of our pop culture hinged on the notion that America stood tall as the only defender of "freedom" against an "evil empire." Yet the mood in the United States after September 11th was unlike any nationalism that I had previously experienced. Suddenly we were the victims of a mass trauma, necessitating that we all stand together and support the troops and our leaders else we appear "un-American."

As popular as President Ronald Reagan was in the 1980s, he was frequently the subject of ridicule. TV shows and films mocked Reagan openly, and even video games had no qualms about making light of his public image. Yet in September 2001, lukewarm-leader George W. Bush transformed into an unassailable icon, and no one dared question the decisions made by the White House. Beyond mere political dissent, the very notion of making light of the president became problematic.

This attitude that addressing certain topics was not appropriate post-September 11th extended far beyond political matters, as corporations rushed to outdo one another in expurgating anything that might upset consumers. Films with terrorist or bombing plot-lines had their premieres postponed, while songs with titles or lyrics that alluded to death or plane crashes were pulled from national airwaves. Even non-violent images of the World Trade Center were trimmed from pop culture, either through clever editing or by removing the media from circulation entirely.

Video games were not spared from the purge. Metal Gear Solid 2, which launched in November 2001, had its ending trimmed of scenes depicting mass destruction in lower Manhattan. Grand Theft Auto III takes place in fictional Liberty City, yet its police cars resembled those of the NYPD too closely and had to be changed for the game's October 2001 release. Eternal Darkness for the Nintendo GameCube has no New York connections, but several levels set in the Middle East were altered and a character was changed from a knight in the crusades to a modern firefighter.

I do not wish to lament any of these alterations in the name of "censorship," I only seek to point out how quickly and broadly the entertainment world struggled to operate after a national tragedy. In their frenzy to avoid "inappropriate" material, most stations (especially in the New York area) broadcast nothing but news reports for days after the attacks. Yet with no actual new information available, this meant anytime I turned on a television, I either saw a burning hole in downtown Manhattan or the destruction of the towers on a loop.

With all the usual methods of escape closed to me for an indefinite stretch of time, is there any wonder why I struggled to cope with my emotions?

I am a very lucky person. September 11, 2001 did not claim any of my loved ones or put me out of work. Instead, the attacks and their aftermath shattered my illusions (some might say "delusions") of how my life was going. I had my own apartment, stable employment, a tight circle of friends, access to tons of video games, and all the pizza I could possibly eat. Did that mean I was happy? Not really.

Confronting my dissatisfaction 20 years ago pushed me to take greater steps towards the life I wanted to live. By Thanksgiving I told my supervisor I wanted to transfer to another branch closer to home, reducing my commute to a mere 5 minutes. At 24 years old, I had never completed my education, so in the new year I enrolled in community college night classes. By 2004 I had straight A's and enough credits to transfer to a proper university, leading me to quit my thankless job and put me on course for where I am today.

Sitting here and thinking about the days following September 11 brings me a lot of pain. I've never been good at facing frustration or helplessness, and when a tragedy occurs on both a national and local level, those two feelings can rule your existence. This shouldn't be news to anyone though, as I think all of us have experienced these feelings in regards to the perpetual emergency of COVID-19. This time, we have no explosions or missing skyscrapers, but the body count is higher than anyone can comfortably count. Any illusions we had about living in the future are long gone.

When this pandemic started, I had my own house, stable employment, a family, access to tons of video games, and all the conveyor belt sushi I could possibly eat. Was I happy? Absolutely not, so I once again took steps to improve my lifestyle. I got serious about daily exercise, spent more time with my kids than at the office, and reached out to a therapist for the first time in decades. 20 months later my employment is not so stable but I'm healthier, happier, and determined not to settle for complacency ever again.

There's no easy way to end a column about tragedy, so let me just say this: The aforementioned two people whom I was most worried about on September 11, 2001 both died before their time. Fortune smiled on me this summer and I got to visit New York for the first time in years. I had a wonderful trip, and I got my vaccine shots, but I also would have traded all my fun to see them again.

Nothing lasts forever. The next illusion-shattering tragedy could happen tomorrow. You don't have to wait for headline news to reinvent yourself or reassess your life. Ask questions every day. Small steps are still steps. Call that person you've been meaning to contact. Revisit that project you've been meaning to finish. And most importantly, never skip dessert.

Diamond Feit was born in New York City but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.