I slept right through horrible history 10 years ago when the United States was attacked Sept. 11, 2001.
Back in my newspaper days, I didn’t get home from work until 12:30 a.m. or later and stayed up a much later than I do now. I usually slept until 10 or 10:30 in the morning.
There was no Twitter, so I wasn’t getting news updates on my phone back then. I didn’t even have my own cell phone then; Jean and I shared one. So when I rolled out of bed about 10:20 that day, I had no clue what already had transpired earlier in the morning.
My younger son, Scott, then 3 years old, was watching Caillou on PBS when I woke up. Once he finished watching that show at 10:30, I grabbed the remote control on the television and prepared to flip over to The Weather Channel to see what the conditions would be for my run that morning.
For whatever reason, I first switched to CNN to see what the headlines were. I was greeted by a split screen, one showing the scene around the World Trade Center and one showing the Pentagon. (What I saw is very similar to the below image taken a little less than 30 minutes earlier.)
I never went on a run that day, even though it was nice and sunny in Hillsborough, where I was living at the time. Instead I couldn’t stop watching the news channels in disbelief and horror over what was happening.
My older son, Alex, who is a freshman in college but was 8 at the time, was sick and didn’t go to school that day. I remember being happy to have him at home on a day with so much fear and uncertainty.
Just driving to work that afternoon (I was assistant sports editor of the Durham Herald-Sun at the time) seemed eerie. Although everything looked fine around me, it just felt haunting not knowing what else might happen that day.
Nothing against the fine people who produce Caillou, but I’ve never liked that cartoon since that day because I forever will associate the show with Sept. 11, 2001.
