It was a beautifully clear day. I rode my bike to work in a hurry, as I had awakened a little late. It seemed a little strange that there was not much traffic on the streets, but I did not think about that much, as I was in a hurry to get to work.
As I pulled into the warehouse where my office was, I said something like “Hi, isn't it a beautiful day?” to one of my co-workers. He responded by saying, “Have you seen the news?” quite gravely.
I had not, so he recounted what he knew. At first I thought he was joking, or making it up to mess with me. I was not sure either way until I turned on the radio.
In that moment I knew that two things were going to happen: First, the economy was going to be in shambles. Second, I was going to lose my job. The first came about, but not as bad as I first thought. The second was a reality of the line of work I was in.
While I wish that all that destruction could be undone (not only for myself, but for everyone), I know that my life would have been shaped differently were it not for those circumstances.
The montage of images last night was thoughtful, but seemed somehow more gruesome than what I remembered. There are different levels of tolerance of violence on the news here in Brazil than in the US, so that may have had something to do with it.
What were you doing when you found out?
I woke up a bit later than usual on the morning of September 11, 2001. My brother was watching tv sit at the table where we have our meals. I said good morning and had a sit myself. He was quiet and focused on the news. Then I looked at the tv and saw smoke in a tall building. I asked him if it was some fire in São Paulo. As if only then he had noticed me, he told me that it was in New York, and it was not on fire. A plane had hit that building. In fact, two planes had hit the towers and one had fell down already. Like the information, the shock came in waves. My brother said there was a suspicion it was a trrorist attack. Moments later, the second building also fell down. There were reports about a plane falling on the Pentagon also. My first though was that America was being invaded, like and old tv series where the Soviets invaded the US. After seeing the scene over and over, I took the phone and called mrs. Sharon, the American missionary living here in Teresina who was my friend. She was watching tv too. The rest of the day was like an episode of Twilight Zone. I'll never forget it.
ReplyDeleteThere's something I would like to know: why did you lose your job? What's the relation between what happened in that day and you losing your job? What did you work in at that time?
ReplyDeleteI lost my job because the company I was working for lost 5 projects from various clients. This was mostly due to the type of work I was doing: Event production for companies.
ReplyDeleteThe company does product announcments, shareholder meetings, sales meetings, and various other types of corporate events. I was in the staging side of things doing audio, video, building sets, and so forth.
As you can imagine, many people did not want to travel after the events of 9/11, so this is the reason many events were cancelled.