Entrekin

Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 began for me, as it did for almost everyone in the world, like any other day. As on most days back then, I woke up in my crummy little apartment in Jersey City, just a block away from Journal Square and the PATH trains I rode every weekday morning to 33rd street before walking a few blocks to work.

I was born on May 8, 1978, and so I had six months experience being 23 years old. I was mostly single and certainly didn’t have any commitments in the world. I was working as a freelance broadcast production assistant at 285 Madison Avenue, which was my fancy way of saying I was a temp at Young & Rubicam, New York. I was only a year out of college and deserved fancy ways of saying things, didn’t I? I was young and naïve and blissfully unaware of the world on a grander scale, all of which was about to change.

Given that I didn’t know that morning was going to be different from other mornings, I didn’t mentally record it. I remember the shower curtain with the tropical fish in my bathroom and the trunk of the old elm tree just outside the bathroom window, and ironing my pants and hurrying out of my apartment at a few minutes to 8 in the morning, but those are as likely memories of other mornings as they are of that day. There were a lot of mornings like that back then. I miss mornings like that.

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