When I had been divorced about a year, I lived in a cabin in the woods of Bowdon, Georgia. I think on some level I wanted to get as far away from other people as I could. Since being an English professor forced me to interact with others at work, I spent most of my private life holed up in my cabin doing my best to play hermit. Basically, I went to work, taught my classes, and made lame excuses to my girlfriend in order to sit in my living room eating cereal and watching static on the TV (there’s no cable in the woods, and I couldn’t see the profit in satellite).
Sometimes I read a comic book.
It was a quiet life, and if not ecstatically happy, at least it was simple.
Three years ago, I walked into work and watched two buildings in New York get knocked down. Perhaps you heard about this. Nineteen young men had wanted to share their dissatisfaction with us, so they took flight lessons, confiscated some commercial jets, and took them for a spin. We all saw it. Message received.
Turn on the TV today and pick a channel. Even Animal Planet will have some mention of September 11. You can’t miss it. Everyone will talk about how their life changed just by watching the Twin Towers explode. At least a dozen people will use the phrase “changed [the world / my life / everything] forever.” You know what I’m talking about. They do it every year now. 9/11 has become a combination of Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, and Ash Wednesday. A day we all stop and reflect on how shallow we used to be and how much we’ve changed and a day in which we renew our vow to stop terrorism by glaring at anybody who doesn’t agree with us. You’re either for us or against us.
Truth be told, I didn’t really feel anything watching CNN that day. Hell at first, I thought it was an advertisement for a new movie starring The Rock and Nicholas Cage. When I thought about it at all, I felt empty inside. I don’t know why; I just did. There’s something about watching disaster on television. It’s frighteningly easy to forget it’s real.
“This changes everything,” a co-worker, Bill, said. We had cancelled our classes, and faculty, staff, and students had gathered in one of the rooms to watch the news.
“How?” I asked. “They won’t hate us anymore?” I didn’t really think two buildings meant that much to the world.
Everyone said the world would never be the same again, but the sun went down just like always. Admittedly, it was a little chilly that day, but September is a chilly month, even in the South.
After work, I went to my girlfriend’s house, and we watched it there, too. A tourist had videotaped the whole thing, so we could watch it from new angles now. Gravity worked exactly the same, even on video tape. There were also live shots of policemen and firemen sifting through the rubble. I think they found some sculptures because I remember thinking that at least we had made out a little better than Pompeii .
“This changes everything,” Tina said.
She hugged me tightly before I left for the cabin. She wanted me to stay, but I had lesson plans to do and some papers to grade and a cat to feed. Also I couldn’t remember if I had made the bed that morning. So, you know, I had to go.
When I got home, my caller ID was blinking red. I turned on the static and poured myself a bowl of Froot Loops. When the static was over, the caller ID was still blinking. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I looked to see who had called.
All it said was “September 11, 2001 2:18 PM, New York, NY” and a phone number that in no way looked even vaguely familiar.
I dialed it, but all I got was some guy’s voice mail. “Hey, it’s me. You know the drill. Leave a message.”
I sat down in my chair where I caught myself reflected the darkened television screen. I still had the phone in my hand, so I tried the phone number again, but the guy was still out.
I thought about some guy buried underneath one of those buildings. In my mind, I pictured a guy about my age. He probably had brown hair, too. I think that’s the most common shade of hair. Chances are he wore glasses just like mine, wire rims being all the fashion in corrective eye-wear these days. I wondered if he liked to read. Maybe he even had a funny name. He was pretty lucky not have died when the floors started folding in on themselves like an accordion. I could imagine that he knew this, though. I could see him sitting in an air pocket buried deep underneath the ground and praying, even though he hadn’t been to church in years.
In my vision, he had forgotten about his cell phone in all the excitement, and he was a little surprised to find it tucked into his jeans pocket just as he had left it when he walked into work this morning. I bet he had a wife or a girlfriend, and his first impulse was to call her to make sure she was alright; after all, he couldn’t really get himself out of the hole, and he needed to talk to somebody. He was probably as surprised as I was to find he had a signal this far underground. Hell, I can’t get a decent signal in an elevator even. I suspect he was a Sprint customer. I assume his girlfriend, I figured her name was Betina or something, wasn’t home or maybe she was trapped somewhere, too. If so, her phone wasn’t working or she didn’t have a signal. I figured she had Verizon like me.
He probably called his family next, but couldn’t get anyone there either. He may have tried friends and / or co-workers after that, and by early after noon, he was starting to panic. I pictured him punching in numbers randomly trying to reach out to anyone and tell them where he was. Eventually, he dialed up my number.
And like his wife, his family, his friends, and his co-workers, I wasn’t home.
When I tried the number again, I didn’t even get the voice mail.
That’s when it became real for me: Sitting in my living room in a cabin in the woods staring at my phone and not hearing the voice mail message from across the country. I felt smothered and claustrophobic, and scared. I felt like it was me in that air pocket, only I wouldn’t even get a signal to call out (I have Verizon). I don’t know that I would have thought to call anyway. I wondered how many other people had tried to call loved ones and strangers from the rubble. I envisioned phones ringing all across the world, and no one answering.
But the phones still rang, still tried to reach out for help even though hope was slim.
I couldn’t shake the sound of telephones in my head, so I got back in my car and went to Tina’s apartment. I curled up next to her in bed tried to sleep.
I married Tin a couple of years after that, and we make pretty good family. Sometimes my stepson and I yell at each other, but it’s usually over fairly quickly. Tina and I have arguments just like any married couple, but we don’t ever stay mad a long time. I love my family, and most of the time I feel safe and snug as a bug with them.
Sometimes, though, I remember “New York, NY” on my caller ID and not hearing the voice mail, and I remember that the world isn’t safe. They still hate us, and we still hate them, and neither one of us can really say why. Like children, we stand our ground and point our fingers and say “he started it” as if that justified anything we do to each other.
But nobody steps in and forces us to shake hands make up.
There are many things I forget. I often forget to read ahead before I teach a novel in class. Sometimes I forget to grade essays. I have even been known to forget to attend class . . . even when I’m the professor. At home, I forget to do the dishes. I almost always forget to change the cat’s litter box. I forget to set my alarm and the VCR. I forget to get my oil changed and my tires rotated. I forget to exercise and eat right. I sometimes forget to tell my family that I love them. I forget to call my grandmother, and I forget to call my dad. In fact, it might be easier to list the things I remember, but that’s not really what I wanted to dwell on today.
While there is an almost endless number of things I forget, there are a few things in my life that I wish I could forget. I wish I could forget the first time a girl cheated on me or the first time I ever cheated on a girl. I’d like to forget the day Elisa Soriano, the first girl I ever thought I loved, was put in the ground. I also wouldn’t mind forgetting the day we buried my grandmother or the day we buried my grandfather. I wouldn’t cry if I forgot the day I found out my best friend’s father had died, which was about two weeks after his funeral. I wouldn’t hate forgetting the series of events which led up to the dissolution of my first marriage. I’d dearly love to forget the day, almost two decades ago, that my mother and I parted ways over yells, screams, and tears.
If I got to choose, though, I’d gladly erase “New York, NY” from my caller ID.
