Where were you?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

My wife and I were dozing that morning with the clock-alarm radio on, and I began swimming up from sleep to dreaming the strike on the Pentagon as the announcer described it, with the aircraft coming in low enough over the Pentagon's southeastern parking lot (the place is mostly surrounded by parking) to clip the light poles. I came fully awake to the words, "The World Trade Center is gone." We looked at each other, got up, went to the living room and turned CNN on.

The wife's workplace told her to just come in a couple hours late -- business all that day was very slack. I spent a good part of the day seeing if anyone was accepting blood donors, as we were figuring upwards of 25,000 casualties that day and the actual figure, or something near it, wasn't known until later in the week -- there were no extraordinary blood drives being set up, and few facilities available to do so in any event.

I ended up staying awake twenty-four hours straight, too furious to rest. I'm still angry.