Ten Years...Wow!

Wow! Hard to believe it's already been ten years since the tragedy of 9/11/2001. I probably shouldn't share what we did on that day because I'll be opening myself up for attack for being an insensitive person, however........I'm gonna do it anyway.

I would normally have been at work in the mailroom at Mileage Plus which is United Airlines frequent flyer program. However, I had quit on 8/29 so I was at home. It was early in the morning, around 6:30 or so. Sean was just a little guy then, about 21 months old. He was watching Bear In The Big Blue House. John was inside with him and I was outside on the porch indulging in my nasty habit. At about 6:45 our neighbor's 12-year old son came running over to our house hollaring, "My mom says to put your TV on CNN!! A plane crashed into the Pentagon!" At that time we thought it was an accident. While he was there with us we saw the planes hit the WTC. He stayed there for quite awhile and we all sat there watching in awe and shock. He stayed until he had to leave for school. We sat there watching and we saw the towers fall. All of this was undertaken while listening to Sean throw a fit because we had changed the TV from Bear. He was not a happy camper. He wasn't talking yet but he was definitely making his displeasure known with lots of foot-stomping, flapping and yelling. Eventually we gave in and switched it back for him. Of course, he was mad because Bear was long since over but he got over it. We sort of felt bad about changing the channel back but on the other hand they were just showing the same footage over and over by that point.

This is the part where I'm probably going to come under fire but I can't help it. We were sitting out on the porch talking while Sean was watching his show. We had been discussing trading our car in on something larger because the Escort we were driving was quite crowded when we carried my folks or John's mom with us and was even worse when our dog Betty accompanied us with them in the car. So we wanted something larger. Yes, folks, we went car-shopping on 9/11. There was nobody at the dealership and they treated us like royalty. It was one of the best car-buying experiences we have ever had. We bought a 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis. She was a wonderful car. We named her Betsy and she was a part of our family until 2009 at which point we had to let her go because she could no longer pass emissions. Not to mention that she needed new oxygen-sensors and the back passenger-side window wouldn't stay up anymore and I had to put packaging tape on it to keep it from falling and if I forgot to replace it quickly enough when it started drying out in the sun it would fall down again. (Notice I said packaging tape not duct tape--less obvious. LOL)

Just because we went car-shopping doesn't mean we didn't care. We did/do care. It's just that us sitting there watching the same footage over and over wasn't going to accomplish anything beyond getting Sean into a full-blown berserk and that wasn't productive for anybody. So we figured we might as well go ahead and do something we had been wanting to do anyway. And, yes, I admit we figured it would be a good day to go car-shopping since most people would probably feel compelled to be sitting at home glued to the TV and we were right. Life did go on that day regardless of what the terrorists wanted to happen. My cousin's granddaughter was born that day so not only did life go on, for some people it began.