May 27, 2004
Then something goes BOOM!
I'm sitting back at ManCamp yesterday afternoon hoisting a few beers with my neighbor. It was a long day at work and I needed a little R&R, a little decompression. We're just sitting back there talking shit and all of a sudden there's this huge BOOM. My neighbor and I stare at each other for a second in stunned silence.
It turned out to be a truck's engine catching fire and exploding. Not an everyday occurence but something that does happen from time to time.
But I learned, no, I confirmed something about myself just then. I am definitely not the same person I was before September 11, 2001. Call me paranoid but for that brief instant, for that tiny miniscule second I was scared.
I heard the explosion and I immediately thought Fuck. We are being attacked. I know, it seems silly now, but the truth of the matter is that I did think it. Even if my mind quickly dismissed the thought as some kind of mild hysteria, it happened. I thought it.
In that microsecond I pictured my wife driving home and finding me dead. I pictured my parents distraught at losing their son. Would they have been killed too?
I know, it sounds crazy. But I have to admit it. I can't fool myself. I just don't think so naively anymore. My little world, that microcosm of friends and family and work and home no longer feel so isolated from the reality of the rest of the world. I am not the same. My family is not the same. And while the world around me still revolves as if nothing had ever happened on 9/11 and beyond, I know it disguises itself in its familiar daily routine. Yet somewhere there is that little nagging voice that says Be careful man. Shit just aint the same anymore.
Posted by Val Prieto at May 27, 2004 08:00 AM
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Val had a scare today. I'm sitting back at ManCamp yesterday afternoon hoisting a few beers with my neighbor. It was a long day at work and I needed a little R [Read More]
Tracked on May 27, 2004 09:09 PM
Comments
I can't see a low-flying jetliner overhead without shuddering.
Posted by: J.Scott Barnard at May 27, 2004 01:17 PM
Nothing crazy about it -- we live in a different world than we did pre 9/11. There are people out there with the "ostritch syndrome" who are in for are in for a rude awakening. Most of these are the "peace lovers" who walk around chanting the 2000's version of "Make Love -- Not Peace".
Posted by: Ray Smith at May 27, 2004 01:57 PM
For weeks after 9/11, every time I heard I jet airplane overhead I'd get alarmed for a split second.
Posted by: Yoan Gustavo Hermida Gonzalo at May 27, 2004 04:02 PM
It's 12 midnight.....
.... do you know where your guns are?
(know YOU do, Val... but everyone else? hmm?)
Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Posted by: Jim at May 28, 2004 01:41 AM
You know what scares me still? Seeing fighter planes and helicopters overhead, the way I did on 9/11. But what can you do? I mean, I considered agoraphobia, but it gets boring cooped up in my apartment for days, let alone hours.
Posted by: Dave at May 28, 2004 07:05 AM
Ditto: freaked out by helicopters, loud explosions and low flying planes: PTSD perhaps.
Posted by: Jane at May 28, 2004 08:38 AM
