the real football

September 11, 2001, was certainly a day that left a strong imprint on the minds of many in the United States. I am no exception, and would like to share some of my experiences from that day with you. There is much to share from that day, so this story will be told in several installments.

It was just another Tuesday morning, not unlike many other that had come and gone before. I had arrived at work about 5:40 a.m.; it started a normal day. It would not finish that way.

After working for awhile in the sector (I am an air traffic controller at Minneapolis Center), I took a break. I usually spent my break time in the “geek room”, as it was called. The geek room was a room where a group of us had banded together to have internet access installed, where we could plug our laptops into the network in order to access the web. Yes, that’s right, plug in – wireless networking was not the common hookup that it is today.

There were several tables in the room, at which we sat with our laptops, as well as a few couches and chairs. This was 2001, so the number of people who had laptop computers was much smaller than today – this break space is a much busier place today. On this day, just before 8:00 a.m. locally, I was spending my first break of the day listening to the KQ Morning Show in my headphones, and reading a magazine, lying on one of the couches. Apparently, I was close to dozing off; it must not have been a very interesting magazine! Then, the craziness began.

I remember lurching up to a seated position, the magazine almost falling off my chest, and my Walkman radio almost flying out of my hands. I looked around the room, not believing the words I was hearing from the radio. The order in which those words came, I cannot exactly recall, nor do I recall everything that I heard. However, I do recall the important ones.

“…plane crash…”
“…World Trade Center…”
“…Osama Bin Laden…”

On the radio, they slightly stumbled over his name a couple of times; it was not such a commonly cursed, er, I mean used name at that time as it is today. I had heard his name, and knew a bit about him, but the words were garbled as I sat up and tried to repeat what I had just heard. I must have looked a little crazed; my friends in the room immediately asked me if I was OK. Clearly things were not fine, but I did not know yet just how strange the day would become.