The column I wrote the day after September 11, 2001Despite Terrorist Attacks, Kids Will Still Be Kids
by Lee Ostaszewski
At a time like this it is hard to be funny. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon knocked the funny right out of me. Sort of the way the wind is knocked out of us when we get hit squarely in, what we used to call as kids, our breadbasket.
Remember how that felt? You get hit so hard and so sharply in the stomach that your body seems to forget how to breath.
Eventually we start breathing again. Actually we start breathing right away, but it is painful and done in short, irregular spurts at first. But you have to begin breathing. Otherwise you become lightheaded, then pass out, and then some guy with breath so awful he should have a hazmat symbol painted on his cheek gives you CPR.
If you ever get hit in the breadbasket you want to avoid the guy with toxic breath. So you start breathing again.
The same goes with humor. We can't live without it. We can't make it through events such as these without it. But because I am writing this column the day after the tragedy, the humor comes in fits and coughs and a little painfully.
Decades from now it will be hard for young people to comprehend what September 11, 2001 was like. I can't say I know what it was like for the victims, the survivors or the rescuers. I hope I never find out.
For the rest of us, who followed the events on radio and T.V., the day was a mix of shock, grief, and having to do a bunch of rather mundane stuff.
For starters, many of us were working when the attacks occurred. Jobs still needed to get done. Many of us did what we could muster up in ourselves to do while also listening to the reports. As hard as it was, keeping busy was probably better. But we wanted to know what was happening. Every new second promised to bring about a new, important detail. Or, as in the first hour and a half, it brought details of one new tragedy after another.
The cascading nature of the multiple events was probably the most frightening aspect. First one plane hit a World Trade Center tower, then a second plane hit the other tower, then a plane hit the Pentagon, then one tower fell, then the next, then a plane crashed in Pennsylvania. President Bush was airborne, his destination unknown. Then he was at an air force base making a statement. The nation's airports were closed. The stock market was closed. Skyscrapers in cities across the nation were being evacuated. Even Disney World shut down.
Still, it doesn't matter that September 11, 2001 will be remembered as another "Day of Infamy," decades from now when young people ask what we did that day, amazingly we will tell them we did a lot of things we do everyday. Dinner had to be made, laundry had to be done, bills had to be paid, children had to be tucked into bed, then had to be reminded, twice, that it was late and they needed to stop talking and go to sleep.
In fact, young children are a great grounding force during a day of horrific tragedy. Regardless of what takes place, they still need to be fed, to be put to bed, to be taken care of. So even if you're not hungry, you make dinner. Even if you have images of destruction and mayhem going through your mind, you listen to a story they want to tell about their day.
The day after the tragedy, the day I am writing this, my son Christopher - a newly inducted kindergartner - was telling me about his day. He said he and his friend Ian were playing a running-away game from the girls during recess. I asked him if the girls liked the game. Chris said the girls didn't know that he and Ian were running away from them. I suggested that maybe the game would be more fun if the girls actually knew about it. He gave this some thought then said, "No, I don't think so."
We were hit hard in the old breadbasket. Now we just need to catch our breath and soon we will be breathing again.
©Lee J. Ostaszewski, 2001
