Surreality

I was driving down the 405 listening to a CD. It was still dark, and I was on my way to an interpreting job. My cell phone rang; it was the other interpreter I was working with that day. I greeted her cheerily. "I'm not going to be there," she said. "What's wrong?" I asked. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Stunned and disbelieving, I hung up the phone and switched over to the AM news station. A part of my mind was saying, "It sounds just like George Orwell's War of the Worlds must have," but my gut knew it was reality. A very surreal reality. The second plane hit. The towers came down. I thought of the thousands and thousands of people who worked there. I thought of my frequent-flyer friends from Boston who might have been on one of those planes. I called home, sobbing, somehow still driving down the 405. I woke up my then-girlfriend and told her to turn on the TV.

I was nearly at my jobsite, where I would be all day. Having lived through a few international crises, I decided to fill up my gas tank before the job started. Who knew what would happen to gas prices while I was working for those 8 hours? I pulled into a gas station across the street. It was quiet. People were very subdued. I filled up my tank, got back in the car and turned the ignition. A loud BANG! came from under the hood. Other customers in the gas station were ducking behind concrete or lying on the ground. Shaking, I popped the hood and got out of the car. I made my hands clearly visible and walked to the hood, opening it to take a look. There was a crack running from the top of the battery all the way to the base. I wasn't going anywhere. I asked one of the attendants where the nearest auto parts store was - 10 miles?????? No, I didn't have AAA.

I called the agency and explained what happened, saying I would be late for my job. They were just happy I was going - about 75% of the interpreters booked that day had called in and cancelled after hearing the news. We pushed my car away from the pumps and jumped into the attendant's van. Somehow, I trusted him. He drove me to the auto parts store, where I bought a new battery, then drove me back and put it in for me. While he was installing the battery, he asked me, "Who is draining the energy out of YOUR life?" Where was the crack in my battery? I thought of Dan Millman's gas station attendant, Socrates. Metaphysics from a gas station attendant? But he was right, and I spent days considering the answer to his question.

I finally made it to my job, which was literally across the street from the gas station, several hours late. By the time I left at around 4pm, the streets and freeways were nearly empty. Rush hour, and nobody was on the road. It wasn't until I got home that I saw any of the video of what had happened. I watched in stunned silence, crying. Amazingly, the casualty numbers weren't nearly as high as they should have been at 9am on a weekday.

The next couple of days were bizarre - nobody on the freeways of LA, no planes or helicopters in the air only 3 miles from an airport, only the sound of military jets flying overhead once in a while.

For me, that day was one of absolute surrealism. The tragedy and horror of the vengeful acts of terror juxtaposed with the generosity and goodwill that human beings are capable of. In the midst of tragedy, I experienced gratitude: gratitude that my car, with a full tank of gas, did not ignite and blow up an entire gas station when the battery split; gratitude that my friends were not on any of those planes (although it would be awhile before I learned the fate of other friends who worked in the Towers and in the Pentagon); gratitude that by some fluke of divine intervention, thousands of people who should have been in the WTC for some reason called in sick or were running late.

Five years later, do we really know what happened? Have you read the 9/11 Commission Report? My life changed in many ways that day - did yours? My heart goes out to all the families of the victims of this tragedy, many of whom have been further victimized by our government. To the victims, may you find peace and rest and healing.