9/11 Thoughts

They say you always remember where you were when something big happens. I was in my high school chemistry class, in Canada where I grew up. It was 10AM eastern. Someone said that a plane crashed into the Twin Towers. I wasn't the slightest bit astonished--I said that planes crash into New York buildings all the time, and cited the time a small aircraft flew into the Empire State building on a foggy day. Then they said that both of the towers were hit, and I didn't believe them at first, because flying an aircraft intentionally into a building just didn't compute. I granted that maybe a building fell because it was a big airplane, but I wasn't too worried.

They brought a TV into the school cafeteria for lunch. There was no cable/antenna, so the image was really, really grainy, but for the first time I got the idea that something really really bad had happened. The US history teacher completely ignored the lesson plan for the day and talked about the history of why Arabs hate Americans, going back to 1948 and the historical claims of the Arabs and Israel to the same piece of land.

Later that night, my Dad went to Future Shop to buy a TV. We spent an hour in the store just watching the clear images for the first time. 9/11 was enough to get my Dad to back off the vow to keep the evil influence of television out of the house. He talked about the world coming to an end.

I read about prophecies that predicted 9/11 in the coming weeks. EGW was very convincing. I still think that the greatest miracle of 9/11 was that so few people were killed. Repeat 9/11 a thousand times, and I tell you that 3,000 dead would be on the low end of the scale.

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I was driving to visit my grandparents last weekend. My cousin was getting married. It was maybe 9pm at night. I was surprised to see every bridge we passed lined with people waving Canadian flags and emergency vehicles, sirens flashing, police officers, firefighters, and paramedics standing at attention. Apparently, the bodies of three Canadian soldiers who died in Afghanistan were returning home that night. We must have been driving down the freeway five minutes in front of the motorcade. They were travelling from the military base in Trenton to the coroner's office in Toronto. I couldn't believe how many people were on the bridges, just to honour the soldiers. Some bridges had 200, some had 30. In all cases, the people were there, ready to salute the passing soldiers.