Most of the time it doesn’t feel like anything’s really changed since Sept. 11, and then something happens. Something like this…
A few weeks ago I was in a restaurant where the owner had let a group of college students hang out in front collecting donations. They were with some religious group trying to raise money for a trip to New York for some conference.
The part that struck me was this exchange:
Man: What are you raising money for?
Woman: For our trip to New York.
Man: You know, I visited ground zero a couple weeks ago.
Woman: Oh.
That stuck in my head. Ground Zero. It sounded like he was referring to one of those pop stars who is so famous that he or she only uses a single name, like Madonna. Ground Zero. If somebody had mentioned visiting Ground Zero a year ago, I suspect that person would have received strange looks. But, unfortunately, the man’s meaning was crystal clear. Ground Zero. The term itself, of course, is a product of another event that forever changed the world. It was first used in a New York Times report on July 7, 1946, and like the New York version, I’m sure most people will fill in the details automatically. Ground Zero. I started a new job a couple weeks ago and my new boss is a former fireman. He has an enormous panoramic shot of the rescue effort that is simultaneously breathtaking and sickening. Ground Zero. I opened the local paper to read a profile of a friend of mine from college. He had been 70 floors or so up and was told by the Port Authority to stay in the building. Fortunately he never was the sort of person to listen to authority figures, and scrambled down all those flights of stairs to safety. Ground Zero. When I think about the Sept. 11 attacks these days, I keep coming back to the Hanson family. A father who was a VP at a software company. A mother who dedicated her life to finding the cause of diseases such as AIDS. And a 3-year-old who just wanted to see Disney World. All lost now, in Ground Zero.
The other day I was flipping channels and saw an ad for a show that was going to feature the brother of one of the hijackers. In the clip, the talking head asked the man how he felt after realizing his brother was one of the hijackers, and he replied that he wanted to kill him. All I could think was, “Me too.”