9/11

Of course I remember. I was on Interstate 55 headed for Memphis, to Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, where I was a PhD student. I studied Hebrew flash cards while I sipped coffee and motored north in that little Nissan pickup truck. My mind grew tired, I put the cards down, and turned on the radio to search for some country music to rest my brain.

Instantly I was bombarded with the Towers being hit by airliners, the Pentagon being attacked, and the White House on fire. Yes, that is what they were reporting at that moment. I was dumbfounded and wondered if it all this was some sort of skit or joke. The White House on fire was what hit me the hardest. Slowly my incredulity gave way to fear, horror, and shock. This must have been what it felt like to be alive when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

There was a live interview with someone in New York. I don't even know what station I was listening to. While he was on the phone, one of the towers fell. When he told his interviewer that, he was met with, "What do you mean the tower fell?"

"It fell down."

"What do you mean if fell down?"

"It collapsed. It fell down."

"What do you mean if fell down?"

I was having the same problem as the man on the radio. Processing everything I was hearing was a bit too much for my brain and my emotions. 

I stopped in Batesville to use the bathroom and purchase another cup of coffee. Two men followed me into the restroom. They were talking about a golf game. That told me they had not heard, and I am not sure what it says about me, but I was giddy over the idea that I was going to be the one to break the news to them. When I told them, they were full of shock and questions. I could answer none of their inquiries, but they walked out of there in a different mood than they came it with.

At school, I burst into the Doctoral Studies Room and began, like a prophet of old, to announce that judgment, or evil, or something momentous had just happened. No one was the least bit interested. That's the way it was then at Mid-America. If you were a PhD student, the outside world did not exist. But that day it began to exist again. How could it not?