"You have no idea what happened today, do you?"

September 11^th.

2001.

That day of days. 

I was working at the time at BAM: the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Even then it was what a former girlfriend referred to as “hipster dofus.”  BAM is a Brooklyn performing arts institution.  Modern dance, modern arts, from what I understand they put on great shows.  I did see Pete Townshend there once. 

I, however, can't dance. I look like I’m making wine when I dance. STOMP STOMP STOMP.  It isn't pretty.

The rest of the area had yet to become the hip downtown Brooklyn it has since become.  I grew up walking distance to the Cyclone, so I remember the REAL Brooklyn. I remember the real bagels, and the real bialys.  Do you all know what a bialy is?

The Barclays Center?  Nope, it was a parking lot at the time.

What was I doing there you might ask?  At the time I still thought I could make a career out of working in Museums.  The truth is I was never formally trained in Museum work. I taught myself what I could and had a great Director at my first museum job who went out of her way to teach me the ins and outs of managing an artifact and laying out an exhibit.  I had a love of history, and still had it in my brain that I would one day run the American Museum of Natural History.  Ah, to be in your 20’s and idealistic…..

I was several months into being the official archivist for the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Did that mean I got to hang out, watch the performances, and make pretty displays?  Nope.  I had to basically babysit all of BAM’s archives that were literally STUFFED into a former dentist’s office at the top floor of the Williamsburg Bank Tower building, a block away from the theatre.  No, really.  They had no idea what to do with the years of old posters and programs and documents that were jammed into boxes and tubes in this tiny office space.  There was barely any room to get by all of it, much less attempt to catalogue and organize it.  So, I basically sat at a small desk and attempted to use the ancient laptop at a small desk to DIAL INTO the internet.  By the time it connected, it was time to go home.

Get the picture?  The job sucked.  It was boring and it was a waste of my time.

Yet, I was still working there on that fateful Tuesday morning, September, 11, 2001.

I was still living at home, and drove from Long Island to work that morning, as I always did, ambling down Flatbush Avenue (the BQE never moved, anyone from my part of the world will know what I mean) and listening to none other than Howard Stern go on about Pamela Anderson, paying attention to finding a spot, and wondering how long it would take the ancient laptop to connect to AOL that day.  Suddenly, Howard stopped talking about what he wanted to do to Pamela to announce that there was an incident at the twin towers.

Apparently a plane flew into the World Trade Center? 

I looked up, and sure enough, one of the twin towers was smoking rather badly.  At that moment all I thought of was that it had to have been an accident, a small plane or something along those lines.  I parked my car, checked in at the office in the main building,  and walked back to my jam packed office. People were stopped in the streets, in shock and listening to their car radios and trying to figure out what was going on.  As the news began to filter in, it began to dawn on me that this wasn't an accident.  It was deliberate. 

I walked back to the office to see if people there had any better info and if they were going home.

“What is everybody doing?” I asked the secretary, whose name escapes me.

“I don’t know, but go home if you want, I know you live the furthest”  she said. Her name I forget, but I do remember that she was always nice.

I walked back to the office, which was on the top floor of one of the tallest buildings in downtown Brooklyn mind you, and did what any dutiful son should do.

I called my mother.

“Ma, do you see what’s going on?”

“Dan-YUL, I want you to get out of there.  Come home now, this is not good.  There might be more planes. Your father is heading home too.”  He worked in midtown Manhattan at the time.

“OK, I’ll get out of here soon, I promise.” A second later, I watched from my office window as another airliner crashed into the second tower.  The twin towers, those two magnificent buildings I knew all my life, were mortally wounded. 

“Ma, I’m leaving, there was a second explosion.”

I hung up and darted out of the building,  ran down to the office to let them know I was heading home and wished everyone good luck.  I was too stunned.  How could this happen?  Were more planes going to come raining down on us?  You have to remember that we really didn’t know what was going on.  It was all very shocking and very confusing.

I hopped into my car.  Already fire engines were blaring and racing down Flatbush Avenue to cross the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges into Manhattan.  Some of those brave firefighters would never make it out of those buildings.  

It took me FOUR HOURS to get home. 

The main roads already being closed around lower Manhattan, I had to zigzag through jam packed parts of Brooklyn just to get to the highway out to Long Island where we lived.  My ears glued to AM news radio the whole time, I drove as best as I could through unfamiliar streets to get to the Belt Parkway, the main artery out to Long Island from that part of Brooklyn.

You could see the smoke for miles.

When I finally drove up the driveway and opened the door to my home, who was there to greet me, as always?

Tyler.

All he knew was his owner, his human, was home.  To him it was just a normal day, and it meant I was home to give him food and toys and cuddles.

He looked at me, tail straight up in the air (cat for hello how are you) purring away.  He stretched, his eyes squinted which was also cat for I LIKE YOU and I'M HAPPY TO SEE YOU.

I picked him up and held him close, kissing his head.  He always smelled so clean.

“You have no idea what happened today, do you?”