I was in the midst of remolding my apartment by myself and the night prior (9/10) I was up to about 4AM finishing the floor tile grouting in the new kitchen.
I was completely exhausted and I didn't want to be disturbed. I turned off my pager and cell phone and took the phone off the hook.
The next morning (9/11) I didn't get out of bed until around 11AM (Eastern). Once awake I started working in the kitchen again, now installing the cabinets and counter-tops. While working I was listening to MP3s, I never turned on the radio or TV, and I forgot to place the phone back in the receiver.
I didn't find out about the attacks until around 2PM. At that time my mother came over in hysterics and screaming about how she couldn't get a hold of me, wanting to know what the draft age is, and am I going to be drafted? I then made the mistake of telling her if there was ever a draft I would gladly go (without even knowing what happened) and she had to argue with me about that for about 20 minutes. It wasn't until that was over I finally got out of her what happened.
She told me, "planes hit both of the World Trade Towers, they both collapsed, everyone in lower NYC is dead!" I just couldn't believe it. She went on, "Planes also hit the pentagon, more planes are missing, and they don't know where they're going to hit next. Bush is in AirForce One flying all over the country because they don't want anyone to know where he is."
In complete denial I went to the TV to turn it on. Luckily one of my TiVos was already on Fox News Channel so I could review the last half hour of coverage. Even seeing it, I still couldn't believe it.
To me it looked too much like movie special effects. Having been in both of them I wondered, how is it was possible for just two planes to bring down the entire twin towers in such a short time. Still in denial I started switching channels to make sure it wasn't some type of hoax like War of the Worlds.
The more I changed the channels, and the more I saw of it, the denial wore off and shock started to set in.
As I was watching the coverage all mom could say is, "See...see...it happened." I just thought to myself at least "everyone in lower NYC" wasn't dead as mom originally said. Mothers :rolleyes:
