9/11

The Day That Shook the World

20 years later, looking back on September 11, 2001

Memory is a funny thing.

As time marches on and years fade into one another, most things get harder and harder to remember.

If you asked me exactly where I was, who I was with, or what I did for my 27th birthday on February 12, 2001, I’d have absolutely no idea whatsoever. I can’t remember a thing about how I may or may not have celebrated another trip around the sun.

After all, that was 20 years and a lot of life ago.

But if you ask anyone where they were on September 11, 2001, they can tell you exactly where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing.

I suppose it’s easy to remember or, perhaps more accurately, impossible to forget that terrible day because suddenly, without warning, it felt as if the world stopped turning. Collectively, we stopped breathing and held our breath for what felt like an eternity.

Maybe the world kept turning, but instantly and irreversibly, it had turned upside down and would never be right-side-up again.

I lived in New York City from the spring of 1999 to the winter of 2001. It was the height of the dot com boom, the first one, and companies big and small were hiring website developers as quickly as they could.

I had flown to New York to do 7 separate interviews with 7 different companies in the time span of one week. I scheduled them strategically and figured that by the end of that week, I’d entertain the offers and choose the best one.

One of the interviews I had, which I was incredibly excited about, was for investment banking and financial services giant Morgan Stanley. I remember being awed by the fact that I was being considered for a position with such a well-known and prestigious firm.

I also remember being doubly awed the day of my interview when I showed up to their offices located on several floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

This was my first time ever in New York City, so I was already blown away by the sheer spectacle and magnitude of the city. I remember arriving one morning outside the World Trade Center and slowly walking towards the towers, staring upwards, mouth agape because I couldn’t believe how colossal these buildings were and that I was about to interview for a job inside.

I only know that Morgan Stanley had offices on floors 61–63 and floors 68–74 of the North Tower because I was able to look that information up online today as I write this. I cannot remember which of these floors my interview was on, but I do remember looking out the windows of the office as I waited for the interview to begin and feeling the strongest sense of disbelief that I was there.

I would carry this sense of awe with me for the rest of the day. The person conducting my interview suggested that after we were done, I should take the elevator up to the Windows on the World restaurant located on the 107th floor and take in the views from up there.

I remember him saying, “If you think this is something, wait until you get up there!”

I couldn't wait to do just that, and as soon as we wrapped things up, I immediately headed to the top to take in what would be one of the most unbelievable views I’d ever seen in my life.

Today, I suffer from an extreme fear of heights which I did not have back then. I’m not sure exactly when I developed this phobia, but I can’t help but wonder if going to the top of the World Trade Center and later seeing what happened had anything to do with it.

I finished with my interviews that week and the best job offer I had was, indeed, from Morgan Stanley. I was sitting in my hotel room in midtown Manhattan preparing to call them and accept their offer when I got a call from one of the other companies offering me a position with a base salary starting at $10k/year more than what Morgan Stanley had offered.

I remember asking if I could have a day or so to make a decision, and they obliged. It was a tough choice. For me, going to work for Morgan Stanley was a huge deal. The other company was small. Morgan Stanley was a name everyone recognized, even if they couldn’t tell you exactly what Morgan Stanley did. I knew it would impress my family and friends. But I liked this smaller company a lot, and they worked for many Fortune 500 clients that I’d also be working for if I accepted their job offer. That was equally as exciting to me.

Eventually, as most things do, it came down to money. I decided to accept the smaller company’s offer and passed on the position with Morgan Stanley. Roughly 18 months later, the dot com bubble had burst, and the fallout was tremendous. Thousands upon thousands of tech workers were suddenly without a job.

In December 2000, as I was worrying over and preparing for that inevitable hammer to drop, to be called into a meeting where I’d be told that they were sorry but were going to have to let me go, I found out that my fiancé had been sleeping with her boss.

Just like that, our relationship was over, and less than a week later, so was my job.

I drank a lot that week.

As much as I hated it, I felt that I had no other choice but to leave New York.

A couple of good friends came over to my apartment to console me and help me pack. I decided I was taking whatever I could fit into my SUV and everything else I was leaving behind. It was all just stuff — stuff I had shared with her, and I didn’t want to keep any of it.

I just wanted to go.

That night, we crammed as much stuff into the SUV as we could, and when we were done, like the good friends they were, they took me out for drinks. I left my car legally parked on the street directly in front of my well-lit building, figuring I’d have drinks with the guys, come home, sleep, and wake up in the morning and take off.

We came back to my place sometime around 3:00 in the morning to find my car windows smashed and much of my stuff stolen. I remember laughing — because of course — why wouldn’t this happen? Everything else had turned to shit. It was the quintessential New York send-off consisting of one final kick in the teeth.

The next morning, I patched up my broken car windows with some plastic and tape and drove away from many dreams, with the sunrise and Manhattan in my rearview mirror, the sheets of plastic flapping in the cold winter wind.

That drive was chilling in more than one way.

Roughly 9 months later, I would find myself living in Florida, working at a company my oldest brother owned and dating a new woman, a kindergarten teacher.

We ended up living together, and on the morning of September 11, I had driven her to the school where she was teaching. After dropping her off, I was heading back home when over the radio, a news alert came in that something had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

At the time they were initially reporting this news, it still wasn’t clear what happened. I remember the DJ saying they thought it might have been a helicopter or a small private plane of some sort, but that they were monitoring the situation and would provide more updates soon.

I got home and turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane slam into the South Tower. I remember the chills that ran up my spine and the tears that welled up in my eyes. I sat stunned, unable to sleep or eat, glued to the TV for the next several days.

I don’t know how long it took before the thought finally occurred to me that, had I made a different choice and taken the job with Morgan Stanley, I very likely would have still been employed there.

I would have gone to work that crisp, clear Tuesday morning in September, to my job in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, just like the thousands of other people who worked there did. I would have grabbed a coffee downstairs before heading up to my office. Just like they did.

The person who interviewed me was probably at work at his desk that morning.

No doubt, hundreds of the people I saw, walked past, smiled at, and rode the elevators with went to work there that morning.

After all, it was just like every other morning.

Until it wasn’t.

One week from today, it will have been 20 years ago that we lost thousands of our fellow Americans in the worst terror attack ever perpetrated on American soil. May we remember them all and hold them and their families in our hearts and thoughts.

We will never forget.

Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001?