The main thing I would tell someone who didn't live through 9/11 but wants to understand what that experience was like is that you probably can't, because you have an unfair advantage. You know how the story ends.
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The main thing I would tell someone who didn't live through 9/11 but wants to understand what that experience was like is that you probably can't, because you have an unfair advantage. You know how the story ends.
On the day, nobody knew how many hijacked planes were out there. Nobody knew if other attacks were coming. Nobody knew what the response would be. Nobody knew ANYTHING. Everybody was just reacting to developments. Improvising.
That was what scared people. Not just the events, though they were scary enough. But the feeling of teetering on the edge of a deep, dark chasm -- so deep you could not see the bottom.
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by [email protected]
It's kind of like how I would react when my grandparents talked about the experience of living through the attack on Pearl Harbor. To me that wasn't a very emotional subject, because I knew how the story ended.
But to them, on the day -- they had no idea how the story was going to end. All they knew was that in an instant, their whole world had been turned upside down. And that's a feeling that cuts deep, that leaves scars.
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@jalefkowit In fairness, the events scared me. Also what you said. But the events were fucking terrifying, watching as a 21 year old.
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@jnl Oh, no doubt. I didn't mean to underplay the terror of the events.
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Thee Mighty Peculiareplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
@jalefkowit It stayed like that for a while too. I think it was a couple of weeks later when I accidentally dropped a metal water bottle on the subway floor and everyone jumped out of their skins and gave me the evil eye, even though I apologized profusely. I understood. It could've been something.
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Thee Mighty Peculia last edited by
@lydialurch I still remember the first time I flew after 9/11, a couple months later. All the passengers looking grimly at each other as we boarded the plane like we were going into battle
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@jalefkowit I lived through it and literally the only thing scary was imagining how Republicans were going to react.
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@dalias Aren’t you a badass. Congratulations, I guess