anyone patriotic today?

T

Thorn Bird

Forum Mom
May 24, 2005
14,767
22
533
Marklar
₥65
spangelet literally had her hand on the door to leave this morning when i realized it was 9/11, and it was suddenly so important to me that she wear a red, white and blue shirt today. i grabbed her peace symbol shirt and was proud to put it on her today. all this strong emotion surprised me. i didn't know i'd feel that way today.

does this day mean anything to you? the past few years on 9/11, i've stopped to reflect what happened, but i was still confused about what the day meant to me. HAPPY 9/11! just doesn't seem the thing to say, but it's not a sad feeling, either. i realized that grabbing the peace shirt fit the bill the best for me, and i realized that this day, to me, would kick 'em in the nuts the most if it could mean a day of acceptance and tolerance. this might be what 9/11 means to me from now on. not that other days don't...

so i'm here, wondering if this day means anything other than a fresh history date to you. i'm sure my children will look at this day like i do any other date i simply might notice on the calendar and POSSIBLY pick out a shirt to wear. but i now know after all this time that i've put a comfortable, personal meaning to it. and in that way, i feel i'm giving the most respect i can to all those who gave their lives that day for SOMEthing. every single life that was lost means a little more to me today.

wishing a peaceful day to all of you. :heart:

/sap crap
 
All the kids here have to wear uniforms to school.


I feel sorry for the people that died. I remember watching it as it happened on TY while juggling my son as an infant trying to get him to stop crying.
 
Ironically all I could think of as I heard on the radio when they were playing Proud to be an American was this.

And the flag still stands for freedom yet Bush is taking that away.
And I'm porud to be an American, where at least I knew I was free.......
 
not feeling esp patriotic, but I DO stop a minute to "grieve" those who lost their lives.

Janice was in NYC when it happened and moved home the next day. I wouldn't be married probably were it not for 9/11.. Please don't take that the wrong way. But she can't watch anything on the topic without getting choked up.



The 10 y.o's in my class know very little about it. they're writing now to tell me what they DO know. a couple know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, except "Twin Towers" or "9.11". I mean, they know the buzzwords, but that's it.
 
i was watching President Bush speak on TV at a school in Sarasota that morning. (with the class)

so, I remem exactly what i was doing. they switched the feed to NYC and me and the class actually watched the second plane hit.

tragic.
 
Watching the second plane hit was surreal. It was one of those moments that you just knew you were watching history take place and that everything was about to change.


It made me think of watching the Challenger explode live on Tv when I was a kid.
 
I called my dad and at that point I had little inclination what it meant or the severity of it. All I remember dad saying was 'this is not funny'

It just felt like something in the movies.
 
I was working for cnn.com at the time and it was one of the craziest days of my life...we had to add something like 80 more servers to handle the load and we went to text only...no ads, no pics, nothing...we got hammered...on sept 12 we served something stupid like 300 million web pages

I also have an uncle that worked there and he happened to be late dropping his daughter off at school so he missed the whole thing...he was there for the '93 bombing and walked down 70 floors...he said his skin was black under his suit from the smoke

a guy I grew up with was one of the instantly killed at a trading firm as well
 
w_a_w said:
I also have an uncle that worked there and he happened to be late dropping his daughter off at school so he missed the whole thing...he was there for the '93 bombing and walked down 70 floors...he said his skin was black under his suit from the smoke
Click to expand...
Damn, one of the guys I work with now was there for both - happened to be out getting coffee on 9/11.

I went to CA's building shortly afterwards, their customer conference rooms at the time had walls of glass that overlooked the WTC...

Our salesguy said they were in a meeting and watched the first one hit, scary stuff.
 
i had a personal near miss, know many with near misses that day, and also know a handful who weren't so lucky. i was traveling out West, and my family and I changed our flight from Boston-LAX to PVD-Salt Lake, and the plane from Boston would have been the one we were on. My best friend was late going to his office...in the West wing of the Pentagon. I had friends who were late to work or had cancelled interviews in the Towers that morning. I also know a lot of people who are still in therapy (through the loss of loved ones, or debris/body parts hitting their windows). This is generally a rough day for me.
That being said, I'm not doing anything special today. It's a day for me to personally reflect on, mostly internally- I will be calling some of my friends to give them a long-distance hug. I think though, that my world view has changed since that day and my attitude of tolerance and respect has matured since that day. I have a lot of friends from India/Pakistan/Turkey/etc (I used to play field hockey with former olympians from out there), that are scared to be in this country because of people's ignorant attitudes towards 9/11, and that upsets me.
 
It was different for me, living in Canada. I work in a gov't building, and we evacuated in the afternoon as a precaution. Tons of flights in the Northeast US were diverted up here. It was very surreal, I think mostly because of uncertainty, and massive amount of people that died. A very WTF day, indeed.
 
Today is a day for mourning, but hardly a day for patriotism. Adopting a culture of fear, pissing away the good will and sympathy of the world, losing our status as moral authority of the world, spending a trillion dollars needlessly, tanking our economy and devaluing the dollar, allowing unwarranted wiretaps, spying, and torture, denying habius corpus, running oil up $150 a barrel and further enriching those very same people that struck at us in the first place, and most importantly sacrificing 4155 brave lives (and counting) for no good reason.

Yeah, you wear your red, white, and blue. I'm wearing black instead.
 
I was in a college english class when it happened. I remember walking into the cafeteria to get a drink afterwards and there were a hundred slack-jawed people with blank faces staring at the t.v.s. Everything was dead silent. It was like something out of the X-Files. I immediately reached for my tinfoil hat and panicked when I realized I had left it in the car. I cursed myself for having become so lazy and complacent. Luckily I had been taught to think on my feet under extreme pressure, however, and I quickly purchased two cans of diet soda from a nearby vending machine. Holding one against each of my temples to fend off malicious signals I worked my way towards the exit on the far wall, never taking my eyes off the brainwashed crowd before me. Never again would I let my guard down, I thought to myself as I slipped away unnoticed. I didn't know until I arrived home that someone had merely flown a plane into a building, and then another, and another.

I found it all very exciting. I never really went through the stunned "OMG America is under attack" phase that so many others did. I never felt outraged or saddened. I still don't really care, other than being affirmed in my belief that people are egocentric, non-thinking sheep a good portion of the time. I'm not going to adopt an eagle or wave a flag or gnash my teeth because of the "them" killed one of "us." I view us as a species, making patriotism a largely useless concept.
 
Last edited:
Sarcasmo said:
I was in a college english class when it happened. I remember walking into the cafeteria to get a drink afterwards and there were a hundred slack-jawed people with blank faces staring at the t.v.s. Everything was dead silent. It was like something out of the X-Files. I immediately reached for my tinfoil hat and panicked when I realized I had left it in the car. I cursed myself for having become so lazy and complacent. Luckily I had been taught to think on my feet under extreme pressure, however, and I quickly purchased two cans of diet soda from a nearby vending machine. Holding one against each of my temples to fend off malicious signals I worked my way towards the exit on the far wall, never taking my eyes off the brainwashed crowd before me. Never again would I let my guard down, I thought to myself as I slipped away unnoticed. I didn't know until I arrived home that someone had merely flown a plane into a building, and then another, and another.

I found it all very exciting. I never really went through the stunned "OMG America is under attack" phase that so many others did. I never felt outraged or saddened. I still don't really care, other than being affirmed in my belief that people are egocentric, non-thinking sheep a good portion of the time. I'm not going to adopt an eagle or wave a flag or gnash my teeth because of the "them" killed one of "us." I view us as a species, making patriotism a largely useless concept.
Click to expand...

:lol:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back