. . . the posts of people who are acquainted with somebody who was acquainted with somebody who died in 9/11. It’s like having some tenuous connection to one of the victims is some sort of emotional capital that people want to milk for as long as they can. 9I’m not talking about people who were actually connected to the victims, of course.)
I’m in a bad mood, so I will now annoy everybody – including myself – by sharing how I learned about the events of 9/11. At least, my story will be short.
I was a student and, as usual, was late for class. When I ran in, bleary-eyed and still half asleep, the prof announced, “Have you heard? The Americans attacked themselves. They crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center. It’s just like what happened in Cuba in 1898. They must be planning a war with somebody.”
I thought this was all some weird, outlandish joke and didn’t believe either the explanation of the events or that the events had even taken place.
Clarissa's Blog 
With the World Trade Centre attacks everyone always forgets that the 9th September was the day Salvador Allende died in 1973 (not that the media would remember anyway).
While I would never claim that Allende did a brilliant job in office, he was a still well intended man and the first Marxist ever to gain power through election and not revolution.
And of course, we should not forget that more people died under the reign of Pinochet than people in 9/11.
LikeLike
Well, there are people and then there are PEOPLE. Some deaths matter a lot more than others. All those Latinos, Arabs, and other folks like that, they probably brought it all on themselves.
Don’t tell me that there are many people who don’t think precisely in this way. 😦
LikeLike
There are people that think like that, but they are declining in influence and number.
But unfortunately these type of people will probably never utterly go away. Man, humanity depresses me. 😦
LikeLike
Big conference on 911 at Ryerson U. in TO right now. Link: http://torontohearings.org/.
I think that when you have an event like this there will be oversights and inconsistencies in follow up reports but it doesn`t mean a CIA false flag operation to help re-elect Bush and enrich Haliburton i.e. Dick Chany.
LikeLike
Eesh. I try and ignore the circus of effusion around this time of year, though that maybe makes me a bad citizen and a misanthrope. I’ll be honest: when I learned about the attacks I really didn’t see the point of doing anything other than going about my day. New York was so far away and there were so many other places in the world where explosions were happening it didn’t seem all that remarkable. My own empathy issues aside, I find it pretty sick the way talking heads, attention whores, and greedy bastards have spent the last ten years milking 9/11 for political and emotional credibility.
LikeLike
I’m about in the same boat as you.
I was in my third year of college and it was a day that I didn’t have class until about 11am so I was sleeping in. A buddy of my called me to tell me to turn the tv on. You know how on movies when someone does that and the person turns on the tv and the event in question just happens to be on (yeah there’s never a need to change the channel from like TLC over to a news station)? That happened to me that day because as soon as I turned on the tv I saw a replay of the first tower getting hit.
LikeLike
I was living in Argentina when it happened, at my parent’s apartment. I kept rather nocturnal habits, so I was sound asleep. S., my best friend in Argentina, is a journalist, so she found out almost in real time. She called me and insisted to my parent’s maid that she woke me up. She did. I picked up the phone, completely asleep, and S. shouts on the phone: “Get up and turn on the TV. They are bombing the US!!!!”. I just mumbled: “????. Who is bombing the US?”. She answered: “I don’t know, but they are bombing the US. I’ve got to go, this is chaos”, and hung up. So I got up, half asleep, and went to the living room like a zombie. My father was working at home. He saw me and said: “You’re up rather early for your standards.” “S. just woke me up saying they are bombing the United States”.”Who is bombing the US?”. “How would I know?,” I replied. “Oh” he simply said, and went back to what he was working on (very typical of my father: http://spanishteachingissues.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-rest-of-world-reacted-to-bin-ladens.html). I turned on the TV, minutes after the second plane had impact the towers, and the rest is history,
LikeLike
I really dig your father. 🙂
LikeLike
He is great material for a comedy writer, trust me. Almost the stereotype of the absent minded scientist.
LikeLike
ECHIDNE of the snakes linked to a great post expressing similar sentiment:
http://www.first-draft.com/2011/09/that-i-dont-own-his-death.html
If your child is musical
don’t study piano
and if he’s dying
stay off his turf
– from a poem Charlotte Mayerson wrote after her son died of AIDS
LikeLike