Paul's Comments

I think I will discuss where I was and what I was doing on this day ten years ago. I'm sure everyone remembers this; I do, and I'll probably never forget it.

So I'll start.

I got up on Tuesday morning, a clear and sunny day like the kind you think of as the sort of wonderful weather you'd expect for summer or between summer and fall as it's not cold or hot, just nice and pleasant. I'm reminded of a line from a song by Sophie B. Hawkins: "It felt like springtime, on that February morning..."

While I was getting ready for work they reported a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. I didn't think much of it, as I point out later in this article, this sort of thing happens. I had to go to work, if I even thought about the event I probably thought about how we'd hear more details later. Uh, that comment I just posted is so eerily prescient, isn't it?

I stopped in a 7-11 on the way to work to get a couple of chili cheese dogs and a soda to eat for breakfast; the place was a block from my office. I happened to mention casually to the clerk that a plane had crashed into a building in New York, no big deal, these sort of things happen, pilot error or other thing, tragedies like this do happen. I might have been thinking of a prior plane crash into the Empire State Building.

I get to my office and I discover that a second plane had crashed into the other tower of the World Trade Center. All of us in the office watched on TV as the two buildings collapsed into rubble, and for me it was a body blow. I was numb. Then I discover that the Pentagon, which is located only 4 miles from my house, in my home town in Arlington, had also been struck.

The president of the company sent a message saying anyone who wanted to could go home. He was right and the office closed down, nobody was in any condition to work that day. I discovered that to be true in my own case as well.

As it turned out the system administrator had sent out a system-wide message asking everyone what the machine name of their computer was. I mistakenly did "reply all" instead of reply. My message read like this:

My computer's name is Licorice.
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"If we find out what country did this, I say, bomb the sons-a-bitches back into the stone age. Turn them into crater glass and nuclear waste." - Paul Robinson, September 11, 2001.

My boss said he understood but I would have to change the tag line on my messages.

I drove home. So did everyone else; the roads were jammed and traffic was very slow, but I don't think anyone really cared, we just moved along and eventually, perhaps an hour or two longer than it took normally, we all got home. I remember how all the radio stations that normally were music had basically switched to talk radio that day, they were taking calls from the public and letting people release their grief.

Cell phone service was basically hit or miss over about the next month or so, I guess people kept jamming the lines. I had just gotten a new phone about three weeks before the incident, so I didn't know if the bad service was the result of a special incident causing excessive use or was the result of too many people trying to use an oversold service (I had it with Sprint and you were only charged for daytime minutes; minutes after 7Pm and before 5AM or 7AM and on weekends were free. Typically calls went through okay during the time when you had to use your charged minutes but during free minutes time it was difficult to get a call through.) I've switched cell phone providers three times since then but I still have the same cell phone number I did when I got the phone in August, 2001.

I got through it, like everyone did. I went to work the next day, and the next, and the rest of the month, and so on and so forth, but to this day I have no recollection of the rest of September, 2011; it's not even a blur, it's like it ceased to exist. I managed, but I think I was probably just going through the motions.

Oh, as for the comment tag line on my e-mail, how do I feel about it?

"If we find out what country did this, I say, bomb the sons-a-bitches back into the stone age. Turn them into crater glass and nuclear waste." - Paul Robinson, September 11, 2001.
"I proudly stand by that statement to this day." - Paul Robinson, September 11, 2011.