>Five years ago, I woke up on that Tuesday morning from a dream of being in a New York brownstone that seemed to be collapsing. I had my cat in my arms and I was trying to escape. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I did want to look it up when I got to work.
I usually got up early back then. I had to cross the Carquinez and Bay Bridges each day. Since I-80 is pretty much jammed from 7:30 on and it took a good a hour and a half to get to work at that point, I had to leave my house at an ungodly hour if I wanted to keep my job. That morning I left around 6:30 am about 15 minutes earlier than normal. It wasn’t until I was on my way to work that I first heard the story on the AM radio.
It sounded like a small airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. As I made my way down the freeway, the whole horrible picture began to unfold. It was a jet that hit the building. Another plane hit the other tower as I was listening to the radio. One of the announcers left the newscast to find the whereabouts of his daughter who worked near the World Trade Center.
Then as I blindly went through the toll booth area of the Bay Bridge, the realization that the airplane problem was not some random accident in New York struck me. A plane had also hit the Pentagon in Washington. Another one was missing. I, like most people, freaked out. My little car sped me to the nearest safe haven I could find, my friend Maria’s house. It was there a mere 30 minutes or so after I had left my house that I watched the South Tower collapse.
>the question is, what have we learned from this experience?