Where was I ten years ago?

I had been living in St. Paul for about 4 months, and my first job was selling windows, which required me to travel all over the Twin Cities. We only had to report to the office for meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 AM so I set my alarm for 8 AM the night before, September 10th.

Set to a radio station when it went off, somewhere between reality and dreamland I decoded the deejay mentioning an explosion at the World Trade Center. My mind still drifting in sleep mode, I hit the snooze and quickly thought it must have been the anniversary of the first terrorist attack on the WTC in 1993. Nine minutes later I was awakened again and quickly shut off the radio to hit the shower.

My customary day, as it still does, was to watch Sportscenter while I got ready. While I expected to watch highlights, a ticker at the bottom caught my attention about a plane crashing into the WTC. I quickly turned to CNN and that's when I realized this wasn't an anniversary for the earlier attack.... little did I know this would be an anniversary all to itself. That's where I was... getting ready for work in my bedroom..

I was not sure whether to go to work or stay home so I called the office. My boss insisted the meeting was still on. At this time both towers had been hit making this more and more likely a terrorist attack instead of an accident. I thought about staying home, but since I had only been working for about 2 months, I thought better of it and made my way to work.

I was listening intently to the radio on the commute. The first tower collapsed as I started on my way. Somehow I managed to navigate my way to work. Maybe I was still sleeping I thought. But I knew I wasn't... this was too real. I finally made it to work a little before 10:30. Everyone was huddled around the TV where our meetings were held. I sat down and the second tower collapsed. Someone mentioned this had to be Osama Bin Laden... a name I had never heard before.

At that point in my life, I was more concerned about chasing the American dream. We all were. We took for granted about being able to see someone off at their gate in the airport. We could keep our shoes on and packed anything and everything in our luggage. Al-qaeda could have been a name of a salad dressing for all we knew.

The world was different. Especially in America, we were naive. We thought terrorism only happened in Europe, Israel, and the Middle East. We felt safe and secure. We had hit the snooze button on reality.

But the dream was too good to be true. 9/11 was an awakening. As citizens of this great country that gives us the opportunity to reach our dreams, this one day made us realize that the safety net of those dreams had holes in it.

Amazingly ten years have flown by. Slowly we have mended those holes and created more nets on top of nets. We are different and life won't quite be so innocent. The real question to ask is "How were you before 9/11?"

I can tell you this... I no longer wake up to a morning deejay.