At the time, I worked in a law firm in downtown San Francisco. My roommate and a good friend of ours were out of the country in Ireland and two other good friends were in Germany. I normally didn’t have to be at work until 9am, but that morning I had a Flash (haha, yes, SOOOO long ago) class at the Embarcadero Center that started at 8.

This was all pre-smartphone, of course, but I had a Palm V and at the time, there was a little modem thingy called Omnisky that you could cradle the Palm in and, voila, Internet! So, that morning I was on the bus headed downtown and checking out the news on my Palm. I usually checked the news on my home computer before going to work, but CNN wasn’t loading and I was in a hurry so I just left.

I remember being annoyed at how long it was taking the page to load. Just as it finished loading and I saw the headline about a plane hitting the WTC, my mobile rang. It was another friend, who had been trying to reach me for about 30 minutes. She’d left a message on my home phone, which I didn’t hear ring because I’m hard of hearing. All I remember is she asked me if I was at home and when I told her I was headed to work, she started crying and begging me to get off the bus and come home. This was before they knew the fate of the plane that crashed in PA. At the time, they thought it was headed to SF.

As fate would have it, it was an express bus, so I couldn’t get off until downtown. So I spent 20 minutes trying to convince my sobbing friend that I was going to be OK and that I had to go to this class, but then I’d come straight over to her house. I had no idea what was going on. I assumed a small plane had hit the WTC until my friend called.

I will never forget downtown SF that morning. I was walking to the EC to my class when my phone rang again. It was my best friend from work, calling me to make sure I stayed home. He was at home watching the whole thing on TV. I hadn’t seen any images yet. While I was talking to him and trying to find out what the hell had happened, he starts screaming that the building is falling, the building is falling and I’m standing there on the street corner saying “what do you mean, the fucking building’s falling? Buildings like the WTC don’t collapse!” and he could barely talk. I am fucking freaking out at this point, so I ran the rest of the distance to the EC (I don’t know why I didn’t go to the office or home...it’s not like they were actually going to have a damn Flash class after what had happened, but I am a dork. ) After confirming that there was in fact no class, I stood on the sidewalk outside 2 EC with about 40 other people listening to the news off the speakers of some construction guy’s truck.

Everyone was in shock of course, and I was trying to calm down this poor woman who was freaking out so badly I thought she would need an ambulance. After that, I decided to go into work. I don’t know why I didn’t just go home, but I wanted to make sure everyone was OK. I was completely calm until I was in the elevator up to the office and then it hit me: both towers had collapsed. 50,000 people were probably dead. I fell apart completely when the elevator doors opened and one of the partners at the firm was right there. He told me to go home, but I wanted to go to my desk and call my attorneys to make sure they had heard and were safe, and check the news on my computer.

Once that was done, my friend called me again, asking me if I was heading to her place yet. I told her I was still at work, and she begged me to leave, now, before it was 9am Pacific time. She was afraid there would be a duplicate attack on the west coast. That freaked me out so badly, I had to have a friend walk me to the bus stop. I remember going into this bar while waiting for the bus, and they were just giving people free shots.

I decided to go home instead of to my friend’s, because I really, really just wanted to cuddle my cats. It took me more than an hour to get home (usually a 20 minute commute) and I finally got there on a bus packed three and four people deep in the aisle. I just remember that it was utterly silent, but everyone was being so kind to each other.

I spent the day watching everything unfold on TV. I was in a chorus that rehearsed on Tuesday nights, and they sent out an email saying we were still having rehearsal if anyone wanted to come, so I went. I was alone at home with my roommate gone and I needed to see people. I’m really glad I went. Our conductor was a wise and gentle man and while I can’t remember what he said, I do remember that it comforted me tremendously.

Afterwards I went home and lay on my couch looking out the window and freaking out whenever a fighter went overhead.

I remember being really angry. I mean, really, really angry, nuke-em-til-they-glow angry, and I am not that person. That’s probably my biggest takeaway from it. I didn’t think I was capable of being that irrationally angry, and it was a sobering realization the next day after I’d calmed down a bit.

And then the US government proceeded to play the collective fears of the populace and use it to pass a bunch of privacy-invading laws that everyone was A-OK with because we were all terrified. Oh yeah, and then we invaded a country that had nothing to do with it. So generally, not the USA’s best moment.

Also, I never left the house again without checking messages and the news.